Rabbi Moshe Reiss

CARTOONS have overtaken Denmark’s previous most important export –
Hamlet!

They are only Cartoons!

A variety of columns from various sources about the Danish Cartoons.

Our media must give Muslims the chance to debate with each other

We used to say 'When in Rome do as the Romans'; but Rome is now
Tunis, Cairo and Tirana, while London is all the world

Timothy Garton Ash

Thursday February 9, 2006

The Guardian

Facing me in my living room, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed says a
Danish cartoonist who insulted the prophet should be tried in an
Islamic court and then "he will be executed according to Islamic
rules". Of course the Syrian-born Islamic cleric is not physically
sitting in my living room; he's on a television screen, live from
Beirut, where the Danish embassy has just been trashed by
demonstrators. That makes the death threat only slightly less
threatening. Imagine how it feels to be one of those Danish cartoonists.

For centuries, there has been a good rule for the coexistence of
civilisations. It said: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
Globalisation has undermined that rule. Because of mass migration,
peoples and their cultures are physically mixed up together. Rome is no
longer just Rome; it's also Tunis, Cairo and Tirana. Birmingham is also
Kashmir and the Punjab, while London is all the world. Because of
worldwide mass media, there is no longer such a thing as local offence
or local intimidation. Everything can reach everyone. Competing
cultures try to spread their norms around the globe: George Bush for
western-style democracy, Pope Benedict XVI for Catholicism, Omar Bakri
Mohammed for sharia.

How should we live in this brave new world? How can we stay free in
it? Like most of my friends, I have been agonising about this over the
past week. We feel this is a defining moment, for all who live in
Europe. And we know that there are no simple answers. The least bad
outcome will be a painful compromise between the universal right to
free speech - the oxygen of all other freedoms - and the need for
voluntary self-restraint in such a mixed-up world.

One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct
threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is
totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image. That
is the first thing to be said. I have been saddened to see British
politicians and commentators, particularly on the left, hesitating for
a long moment to say so clearly, or feeling it necessary to say other
things first. (Do you want to leave the defence of free speech and
non-violence to David Davis?) I have also been saddened, though hardly
surprised, by the weakness of the EU's reaction to the criminal attack
on the Danish embassy in Syria, which seems to have been permitted, if
not actively encouraged, by the Syrian regime. We should have said:
when you burn the Danish flag you burn our flag. Why weren't all EU
ambassadors instantly withdrawn from Damascus in protest?

Violence or the direct threat of violence - as in those posters held by
London protesters that read "Behead Those Who Insult Islam" - is both
morally unjustified and, rightly, brings the threat of criminal
prosecution. It is right that Abu Hamza has been convicted for
incitement to murder. (Incidentally, this shows that we do not need a
new offence of glorification of terrorism, since he was convicted under
existing laws.) Those Danish cartoons were offensive, perhaps even
abusive - and I was not in favour of their re-publication in various
European newspapers - but they were not threatening to any particular
group or individuals. They are in no way comparable with a death threat
to individual cartoonists or torching an embassy - with people dying in
the process. And let's not have any of that tired old higher nonsense
about "structural violence" or "repressive tolerance".

This violence was unjustified and criminal, but perhaps it was also
effective. One way of looking at the self-restraint of the British
media over the past week is to say how responsible, pragmatic and
sensitively multicultural they all were. Alternatively you might say
they were scared of having their offices burned. Was it wisdom with a
seasoning of fear, or rather fear packaged as wisdom? Throughout
history, violence has often paid off, but the struggle of civilisation
against barbarism is to ensure that it doesn't.

That said, the question remains: how to strike the balance between free
speech and mutual respect in this mixed-up world, both blessed and
cursed with instant communication? We should not fight fire with fire,
threats with threats. The danger at this critical moment is that we
will see the beginning of a vicious spiral, with Muslim extremists
blowing wind into the sails of anti-Muslim extremists (such as Nick
Griffin of the BNP, and how I wish he had been convicted a couple of
days before Abu Hamza), whose violent language in turn drives more
moderate Muslims to support the jihadists, and so on down. But I do not
agree with yesterday's Guardian leader when it said that the BBC's
Today programme was wrong to broadcast an interview with Omar Bakri
Muhammad, who was also interviewed by Channel 4 news.

On the contrary, I think the British media have done exactly what they
should by letting us hear the voices of Muslim extremists but setting
them against moderate and reasonable Muslim voices, as well as those of
non-Muslims. There was a riveting discussion on Newsnight, in which two
British Muslim women calmly argued with the ranting, demagogic, but in
style and accent also recognisably British, extremist Anjem Choudary,
of the al-Ghuraba groupuscule. Perhaps it would have been better still
if the discussion had been chaired by, say, Zeinab Badawi rather than
Jeremy Paxman; but the essential point is that it provided a civilised
platform on which Muslims could argue with fellow Muslims. Reporters
sweepingly write of "Muslim anger" erupting across the world, but many
British Muslims are as angry with the jihadist provocateurs as they are
with the Danish cartoonists, as we will doubtless see in the
demonstration planned by British Muslims in London this Saturday.

The temptation, to which too many are succumbing, is to see this as a
showdown between Islam and Europe or the west (although, for once, the
US has been somewhat out of the firing line). That is how extremists
want to frame the argument, as in the poster waved outside the Danish
embassy in London: "Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer". But the
real dividing line is between moderates and extremists on both sides,
between men and women of reason and dialogue, whether Muslim or
non-Muslim, and men and women of hatred, such as Abu Hamza or Nick
Griffin. Not for the first time in recent history, the means are more
important than the ends. In fact, the means you choose determine where
you'll end up.

This is not a war, and it's not going to be won or lost by the west.
It's an argument inside Islam and inside Europe, where millions of
Muslims already live. If reason prevails over hate, it will be because
most British, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish and
altogether European Muslims prevail over their own extremist
minorities. We non-Muslim Europeans can contribute to that outcome, by
our policies abroad, towards Iraq, Iran, Israel and Palestine, and at
home, on immigration, education, jobs and so forth. We can also
contribute by cultural sensitivity and self-restraint, but we cannot
compromise on the essentials of a free society. Offering platforms of
civilised free speech for European Muslims to conduct their debate with
each other, as the British media have done this week, is one of the
best answers we can give to hate.

Moral Atomic Bomb

In the midst of a planetary intifada, let us stand by the moderate
Muslims.

BY BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Thursday, February 9, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

One can find these cartoons mediocre.

One can perceive in them, as I do, a certain similarity with the
anti-Semitic and racist caricatures of the 1930s or '50s.

One can--and it would still be true--decide that depicting the
prophet in this way, particularly with such dumb and obnoxious
features, wasn't the brightest idea in the present context and amounted
to tossing a lit match onto a powder keg.

Still, it is one thing to publish ludicrous cartoons in a newspaper
that no one has heard of outside Denmark, but it is quite another to
see these cartoons travel around the globe four months later, igniting
a form of planetary intifada with enormous demonstrations, embassies
and consulates set on fire, a priest shot dead in Turkey, four
protesters killed in Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan, not to mention the
turning of Westerners living on Islamic soil into targets, mortal
enemies threatened with death--expiatory victims offered to the
white-hot, crazed and radicalized crowd.

So what made this demented scene, this planetary upheaval, possible?
However you might look at the problem, it is hard not to see that
insidious forces have brought these drawings to the attention of the
Muslim masses. And it is hard not to link this provocation, the
deliberate circulation of these cartoons, the quasi-home-delivery of a
Danish paper that no one could have guessed had so many readers in the
Muslim world, it is hard not to link this self-inflicted blasphemy,
this calculated offense (calculated, mind you, by the organizers of the
distribution of the cartoons), it is hard not to link this blasphemy to
a new planetary configuration, itself determined by three recent and
major events.

The diversionary tactic of a Syria which we never saw so concerned
over religious matters, but which now turns out to be capable of
anything--including infiltrating agents into Lebanon and sponsoring
demonstrations in Damascus, where it is well known that nothing of the
sort can happen without the explicit assent of the government--in order
to reclaim its role as a great regional agitator and make everyone
forget the involvement of its secret services in the murder of Rafik
Hariri.

The hardening of Iran's Islamic Republic, ready to make all kinds of
theological concessions (including a grand historic alliance of Shiites
and Sunnis, which experts have been telling us for decades would be
against nature) with the goal of heading up in the Muslim and Arab
world the grand anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and antidemocratic crusade.

And then this tragedy in the Palestinian territories of the victory
of an ideology whose themes (the call, based on the denial of the
Holocaust, for the pure and simple destruction of Israel and the Jews)
had up to now been in power only in openly dictatorial, sometimes even
crypto-fascist, states. This ideology has triumphed for the first time
in a long while through democratic decision and the sacred path of the
ballot. Would we be witnessing, without this electoral sacrament of
Hamas, Hebron crowds so sure of their right to hold any Westerner in
the West Bank accountable for the offense? Would we be witnessing all
these Fatah militants--were it not for the will to defy Hamas on the
very terrain where it won--actually trying to outbid everyone else in
the grotesque denunciation of the "French position," as manifested by
the reprinting of the cartoons in an obscure Parisian newspaper?

These three events are linked as a triangle. There is between these
three poles a veritable triangle of death, which is in the process of
locking into place thanks to the cartoons affair-- and which, if it is
successfully welded together, will produce not just symbolic heat, but,
with an Iranian bomb, a fissile heat unlike anything we saw in the good
old axis of evil.

And, faced with this triangulation in progress, faced with this
formidable hate-and-death machine, faced with this "moral atomic bomb,"
we have no other solution than to counter with another triangle--a
triangle of life and reason, which more than ever must unite the United
States, Europe and Israel in a rejection of any clash of civilizations
of the kind desired by the extremists of the Arab-Muslim world and by
them alone.

The heart of this second triangle? First, the affirmation of
principles. The affirmation of the press's right to the expression of
idiocies of its choosing--rather than the acts of repentance that too
many leaders have resorted to, and which merely encourages in the Arab
street the false and counterproductive illusion that a democratic state
may exert power over its press.

And second, in the same breath, the reaffirmation of our support for
those enlightened moderate Muslims who know that the honor of Islam is
far more insulted, and trampled under foot, when Iraqi terrorists bomb
a mosque in Baghdad, when Pakistani jihadists decapitate Daniel Pearl
in the name of God and film their crime, or when an Algerian
fundamentalist emir disembowels, while reciting the Quran, an Algerian
woman whose only crime was to have dared show her beautiful face.
Moderate Muslims are alone these days, and in their solitude they more
than ever need to be acknowledged and hailed.

Mr. Lévy is the author of "American Vertigo," published recently
by Random House, and of "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?" (Melville House,
2003). This piece was translated from the original French by
Hélène Brenkman.

THIS
IS NOT ABOUT MOHAMMED'S TURBAN

by Michael Radu

In September 2005, Danish
newspaper Jyllands-Posten

published 12 cartoons that depicted the prophet Mohammed in

a less than positive manner, including one
that has his

turban replaced by a bomb with a lit fuse. This January,
a

Norwegian journal reprinted the
cartoons. The result,

according to Der Speigel, was that Arab countries including

Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Jordan,
have staged loosely

organized, impromptu boycotts that have led many companies,

including France's Carrefour supermarket chain, to
remove

Danish products from their shelves. Denmark's Jyske Bank has

estimated that a one-year Arab boycott
of Danish food

products could result in lost revenues of 322 million euros

and the loss of as many as 4,000 jobs.

For liberal Europeans, used
to cartoons or comments

involving Jesus Christ, the Pope, or God himself, this
was

just another example of media
irreverence in a post-

Christian country. Indeed,
according to the State

Department, as of January 2002, while 84.3 percent
of the

Danish population belonged to the
official Evangelical

Lutheran Church, only about 3 percent
of those church

members attend services regularly-making them about the same

number as there are Muslims in Denmark.
Approximately 5.4

percent of the population is not religious and 1.5
percent

atheist. There are therefore twice as many
agnostics and

atheists than practicing Christians.

Not surprisingly, given such
attitudes, when Thorkild

Grosboel, pastor of Taarbaek, a town
near the capital

Copenhagen, and thus a state employee, stated in 2003
that

"there is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life,
there

is no resurrection" and was fired, many Danes supported his

"right" to a salary as a pastor. All of this suggests
that

if one looks for "crusaders," Denmark is simply
the wrong

place.

Speaking in Doha, Qatar, ex-president Bill Clinton
claimed

that the cartoons are an "outrage" to Muslims. On the other

hand, belatedly and somewhat surprisingly, many
Europeans

seem to understand what is at stake--quite simply,
freedom

of expression and, implicitly, liberal democracy in general.

That is why Die Welt and Berliner Zeitung in
Germany, La

Stampa in Italy, El Mundo in Madrid, France Soir in
Paris,

and Tribune de Geneve,
among others, reprinted the

"offending" cartoons, in solidarity with
Jyllands-Posten.

Even more surprising, albeit of
doubtful sincerity or

lasting power, the European Union told the
Saudis that a

boycott against Danish products will
be interpreted as

directed to all EU members. (The giant French
supermarket

chain Carrefour nonetheless went ahead and removed
Danish

products from its shelves.

The reaction in the Arab/Muslim world was revealing of what

may well be the most important and lasting
result of the

controversy. With a handful of honorable exceptions, such as

Mona Eltahawy, who asked "Can we finally admit that Muslims

have blown out of all proportion their
outrage over 12

cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed
published in a

Danish newspaper last September?" that reaction was defined

by two elements: a fundamental lack of understanding of what

democracy and freedom of the press are
all about, and

continued use of violence or threats
to impose Islamic

concepts upon non-Muslims.

As could have been expected, the worst offenders
were the

Palestinians, who are major beneficiaries of
Scandinavian

aid--which should put paid to the argument that the
recent

electoral victory of Hamas was simply punishment
for the

Fatah party's corruption, rather than another indication of

the popularity of violent
Islamism. Anti-Danish (and

Norwegian and Swedish) mass demonstrations have
been held

throughout the Muslim world and threats made
against the

citizens of those countries in Gaza. The Saudi and
Syrian

ambassadors to Copenhagen have been withdrawn, and Denmark's

diplomatic relations with Libya ruptured.

The generalized boycott against Danish products
have cost

the main European dairy producer, Arla Foods
(which has

annual Middle East sales of $488 million), $1.8
million a

day. It expects to have to lay off workers,
as does Novo

Nordisk, the world's largest maker of insulin. One can only

wonder if the health of children and
diabetics is less

important than imposing Islamic
values on a small,

democratic European country.

By now, the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, the

Muslim World League, and the Arab League have all
charged

Denmark with blasphemy, desecration,
and sacrilege. A

protester in Kuwait said he wanted Danes "to feel the
harm

as a people the same way they harmed our prophet." And
the

World Assembly of Muslim Youth
has decried Denmark's

"culture of Islamophobia."

It has taken a long time for Samuel Huntington 's concept of

a "clash of civilizations" to be taken seriously in European

and American elite circles, but how else could one describe

mass demonstrations in the street and such strong government

reactions throughout the Muslim world against the concept of

a free press, which is clearly a Western invention? And
we

should be clear that that is what is at stake. The
Danish,

French, and Norwegian governments have all tried, futilely,

to explain that what newspapers publish has
nothing to do

with government policies, and it should be
obvious that

neither Arla Foods nor Novo Nordisk control the
editorial

decisions of Jyllands-Posten. Unfortunately, in most Muslim

and all Arab countries, there are no
such separations.

Hence, the demand for
government action against the

newspaper - a call going directly against the very
essence

of Danish and European democratic systems.

The latest assault against Western values in
the name of

Islam is not the first. There have been
similar, albeit

smaller and briefer ones, attacks on free
expression for

almost two decades, in the cases of novelists Salman Rushdie

and Michel Houllebecq, journalist Oriana Fallaci, and Dutch

film director Theo van Gogh, who was assassinated,
all in

the name of punishing insults to Islam. The Jyllands-Posten

conflict, however, seems to have accomplished two things in

the West. First, it has made it clear that
most Muslims

simply do not comprehend but nevertheless
oppose Western

democratic values and
diversity. Second and
most

important, it has forced
the Europeans to begin to

understand and react to that fact.

SPEAKING FREELY

The misplaced defense of free speech

By Aseem Shrivastava

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of
thought which they seldom use."

- 19th-century Danish Christian philosopher Soren
Kierkegaard

A mature sense of humor must be founded on the capacity to laugh at
oneself, for it is by worlds easier to make a laughing-stock of others,
especially when one persists in remaining ignorant of their
sensibilities. This can become seriously dangerous and lead to some
absurd consequences when done in public.

This is the lesson one may draw from the events sparked by the
publication of a series of frivolous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed
in a Danish newspaper.

There are some other lessons that can be learned, but first a brief
excursion into some not-so-popular strands of Western philosophy will
be necessary to expose some of the elementary confusions regarding
faith and reason that pervade popular discourse.

Is God really dead?

Since Friedrich Nietzsche made the oft-quoted but widely
misunderstood remark about "the death of God" in the late 19th century,
atheism has become part of intellectual orthodoxy in the West. It is
not merely fashionable to be an atheist today. It may also indicate
spiritual sloth and intellectual laziness, for blind believers in
material progress and the church of technology need not take the
trouble of examining the underlying philosophical underpinnings and
prejudices of their own thinking, not to speak of the conspicuous
absence of spiritual values. Nobody born in the West during the last
century needs to waste any time in doubting any more whether God exists
or not. It has been scientifically "proved" that there is no God. Such
is the atheistic faith, if I may be permitted a malapropism.

In fact, no such thing has ever been proved in the history of human
thought. The two things hardest for human beings to prove are those for
which there is no proof and those for which there might be too much! It
has been as difficult to show God's existence as it has been to
disprove the hypothesis. Absence of evidence is not the same thing as
evidence of absence.

When it comes to divine matters, all that human thought has been
able to persuade others of are probabilities. Thus the French
philosopher Blaise Pascal argued forcefully in the 17th century that if
one was uncertain about the existence of God, it was far wiser to bet
on (and believe in) his existence, at the cost of sacrificing some
pleasures, than to deny a possible great fact (and carry on with a
blind way of life) for which one may suffer "eternal damnation".

Interestingly, the 19th-century Danish philosopher Kierkegaard,
quoted at the start of this article, was an avowed Christian. However,
he expressed his criticism of the established Lutheran Church of his
day when he distinguished himself from "Sunday Christians".
Importantly, he suggested that reason cannot decide the matter of God's
existence. Why? Because if the fact was that God did not exist and one
tried to prove his existence, it would be impossible to do so and, on
the other hand, if God did in fact exist, our attempt would be all too
foolish! A bit like painting the sky blue.

Thus belief in God's existence involved a "leap of faith". But faith
was not, for Kierkegaard, a foul word. It was not inconsistent with the
use of reason (as his many books demonstrate) and nor was it a
superstition. On the contrary, "faith is the highest passion in a human
being", he wrote in his book Fear and Trembling.

The irony, in light of recent events in Denmark, could not be starker.

In modern Western intellectual sensibility the reigning mainstream
view, which informs most of the response in the Western media to the
events emanating from the publication of the cartoons of Mohammed, is
that science and reason have for a long time now overwhelmed religion
as a basis for a world view and can and have replaced it.

Progress is, among other things, understood as the transition from
religious to scientific societies. (Let us abstract, for the time
being, from the massive church-going population of the United States
that wanted only "intelligent design" to be taught in schools.) This is
taken very widely as an article of faith in the popular mind of the
West.

Such a view is just what Kierkegaard spent much of his life
criticizing. With Pascal, two centuries before him, Kierkegaard argued
that there were metaphysical truths that reason could only express, but
never discover, that "the heart has its reasons that reason knows not
of", as Pascal so pithily expressed it. For these two thinkers, both
reason and faith were indispensable. There was no choice to be made
between the two, if one knew the place of each.

It is safe to argue that present-day Western societies with their
ruling ethos of material values, their willing embrace and imposition
of compulsive consumerism (on the rest of the world), not to speak of
the resulting narcissism, nihilism, the trivialization of spiritual
values, and a total loss of faith in anything not centered on
(privileged) humanity and its limited anthropocentric vision, would
have terrified and ruined the digestion of such thinkers as Pascal,
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

That is the extent to which Western culture is today in treason
against some of the highest values of its own past.

It also bears mention that the history of Islamic societies, in
which (to take just a few examples) mathematicians such as Omar Khayyam
and Abu Hamid al-Ghazali found no contradiction between their religion
and their reason, and in which tolerance of religious and intellectual
freedom was in many cultures the very hallmark of good governance, is
quite different from that of those periods of European history when
true thinkers and skeptics, like Giordano Bruno, were burned at the
stake. I point this out only to suggest that anxious extrapolations
from the European experience of religion to that of others is free
neither of prejudice nor of dangers.

Now, after that little philosophical preamble, we may approach the
meaning of the events set in motion by the publication of those
cartoons in a Danish newspaper three months ago.

Freedom of expression?

Is it so hard to make sense of the upset caused by the cartoons to
so many Muslims across the world? If so, Palestinian writer Remi Kanazi
may be of help: "Picture this: a cartoon of Jesus, with his pants down,
smiling, raping a little boy. The caption above it reads 'Got
Catholicism'?" Or how about a picture of a rabbi with blood dripping
from his mouth after bludgeoning a small Palestinian boy with a knife
shaped like the Star of David - the caption reads, "The devil's chosen
ones."

Kanazi points out that there is probably a minority of free-speech
advocates in the West who will accept such cartoons as within the law,
if not within decency. But he is right to speculate reasonably that
there will be public outrage, most media outlets would not pick them up
and advertisers would soon pull out of those that did. A cartoon
depicting a bomb-hurling Jesus, when the Irish Republican Army was
setting Belfast ablaze, would have been greeted with revulsion and
indignant censure.

Why is it so hard to understand that there are millions of people
living today who still have not lost their faith, who are not prey to
wealthy nihilism and its frivolous excesses, who still run their lives
along disciplined religious lines? Why must it be assumed, in light of
what the best religious thinkers in the West have themselves pointed
out, that people with faith are necessarily unreasonable and
superstitious? Couldn't a case be made that precisely those without any
faith in any value, or principle, or god (except power and wealth)
would be unreasonable?

Free press? How come we hear so little from the same free press
about European governments helping the US ferry people - on no fewer
than 800 flights over four years, according to Amnesty International -
to be tortured in places where it is legal to do so? How is it that
nobody in the European free press is talking much about the fact that
Iran stopped any further discussion of its nuclear program because the
three EU leaders who were parleying with them reneged on their side of
the bargain, by not ensuring Iran security in the event of a foreign
invasion?

We hear nothing from the free press about the fact that the success
of Hamas in the recent elections may have more to do with its schools
and health clinics for beleaguered Palestinian communities (while the
generous "international community" has abandoned them) than with its
purported Islamic fundamentalism.

The "free" media in the West do not bother to investigate the events
of September 11, 2001, or allegations that the Central Intelligence
Agency itself may have been involved in the Bali bombings of 2002. It
does not make any demands of the Bush administration to release the
more than 1,700 pictures and videos of tortures and humiliations at Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo that the Pentagon has kept away from the public
eye.

We have to hear from bloggers on the Internet about the US forces in
Iraq kidnapping women and girls related to suspected insurgents.
Needless to mention, no dead American soldiers are shown on the TV
screens of the Western media (though there is no bar on showing those
killed by suicide bombers in Baghdad). How often is it remembered, not
to speak of responsibility taken for the fact, that genocidal UN
sanctions prosecuted by the West killed more than a million innocent
people in Iraq in the 1990s? The free media in the West keep secret
from the public the fact that the US has for years given asylum to
proven terrorists such as Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, wanted by
Latin American governments for blowing up planes and suchlike. They are
exempt from the "war on terror".

Above all, the media do little to ask for the impeachment of the
consummate liars and mass-murderers who occupy elected positions in
more than one Western democracy today, even as they pretend to teach
lessons in political morals to less fortunate countries.

Free press? Or cowardly media eager to please the wealthy masters?

European cowardice has reached such abysmal depths that the media do
not even have a nose for European interests anymore, if they are at
odds with those of the Americans. How many times have we heard the
European media point out that the Americans and the British have gone
to Iraq (and are now going to Iran) looking for oil? We are encouraged
to think that the Americans are so principled that they would have been
as willing to shed the blood of their young men to bring freedom to a
broccoli-growing tyranny in the South Pacific.

To gain monopolistic control of the oil supply of economic
competitors such as Japan, China and the Europena Union has been the
little-analyzed, overwhelming reason for the invasion of Iraq (and why
Americans will never leave that country unless and until their own
citizens demand it) and the forthcoming attack on Iran. But free
Europeans prefer to look the other way. And deep in their hearts they
know that their silence is a lie.

The dangers of cultural solipsism

To philosophers, solipsism is the view that the only thing in
existence of which one can be sure is oneself. From here to relegating
others to the far corners of one's imagination is but a short step,
especially when one has the power to control their realities, for then
one can subject them at will to one's illusions. What fun! If a lot of
people in a certain culture fall into the habit of doing this, one is
entitled to speak of cultural solipsism.

It is often heard in Europe (less often in the United States)
nowadays that immigrants – and Muslims more than others – are
destroying the age-old culture of the West. It is true that Western
culture has seen far more happy times, when the meaning of life was not
lost. However, if truth be acknowledged, nobody has robbed Europe of
its culture and its heritage as effectively as the organized greed of
multinational corporations.

It is they, with their agendas for endless growth and prosperity
(self-enrichment), who have enslaved everyone in their jobs (when they
are lucky to have one), who have made people too busy to dance, sing
and create culture. It is they who have sought cheap labor from North
Africa, the Middle East and many poor parts of the world, often sending
headhunters to these countries looking for workers cheaper than their
own. It is they who have brought on the more or less rapid unraveling
of the welfare state, robbing the working classes of the benefits of
public services while levying more taxes from them (while reducing
those that the rich pay), making them work harder, and pushing for an
increase in the age for retirement. Much of this is meant to meet the
competition from East Asia, especially totalitarian China, which was
introduced to capitalism by president Richard Nixon and secretary of
state Henry Kissinger back in the mid-1970s.

It is not the contention of this writer that Muslim communities are
paragons of justice. Very far from it, in fact. If one looks around the
world one is immediately struck by the routine oppression of societies
like Saudi Arabia or Egypt, among others. However, there is plenty of
oppression within Western societies too, not to forget the injustices
inflicted by the West on the rest of the world.

If we are to survive globalization, communities of remarkably varied
backgrounds and unequal histories have to learn to co-exist and
understand themselves and each other. Most important, they have to
diagnose their own ills honestly. This cannot be achieved even
minimally if economically and militarily powerful Western societies
continue to live in a culturally solipsistic universe in which others
are mere figments of the imagination, fit for war games when they are
at a distance, and the butt of racist jokes, even when they are
neighbors. Far from such brutality and vulgarity, ruthless
self-criticism has to be recalled as the very touchstone of democracy.
It is in this context that genuine political opposition and a free
media take their significance.

Western societies are duty-bound to examine themselves and their pasts
in relation to others. That colonialism, imperialism and the
concomitant racism have played and continue to play a huge part in the
formation of the identities of everyone living today - whether they are
Westerners or not - is not a theory but facts that any self-respecting
scholarship acknowledges. That these facts of history inevitably color
perceptions even today cannot be doubted. Only cultivated or
intentional ignorance, led by state and media propaganda, can hide
them.

The realities of others are also no less imperative to discover if
one is to know one's own reality honestly. To surrender to parochial
instincts, that too in the name of higher values, such as freedom of
expression, is not only to ensnare oneself in further illusions, but to
endanger today the very survival of human civilization as we know it.
If the West were culturally less solipsistic it would not have found it
hard to respect the sentiments of a billion-strong community that has
stayed true to a key tenet of its faith: that the image of God, and of
the Prophet, cannot be drawn. Even from a secular but skeptical point
of view it may be wondered as to who could draw a picture of a human
being whose image has never been recorded. In a similar vein,
pantheists have argued that if God is everywhere, who could possibly
draw an image of him/her/it?

If the realities of the lives of others are not respected and
understood minimally (presumably a hallmark of civilization), the
"clash of civilizations" (more accurately, the clash of barbarisms)
will become all too tragically real. Thus it is absolutely necessary to
imagine how it feels to be an Iraqi mother, all children lost to US
bombs, whose husband has lost his job (because the factory where he
worked was bombed) and now wants to help the insurgents throw the
Americans out of Iraq.

Or to conceive how people on the streets of Tehran feel after
European leaders have betrayed them, leaving them quite exposed to
attacks by US or Israeli bombers. Without extending our imagination in
these directions, one will fail to understand and alleviate the despair
that people exposed to the military might of the West feel today. In
the process, the despair will be aggravated with consequences all too
foreseeable.

Can Europe recall its own culture?

When the arteries of human thought are prey to indoctrinated herd
instincts under the tutelage of the big-brother state, how much freedom
is there left to defend?

Freedom is to know the balance between silence and speech, to know when
and about what to speak in public, not to rave and rant at will, not
caring for the sensitivities of others. Hate-mongering is not freedom
of speech. In a world situation fraught with potentially fatal
geopolitical tensions generated around Islam by Western powers, it may
easily become the kickoff for a terminal world war. It also
demonstrates irresponsible journalism, atrophying under the force of
the commercial imperative that compels it to confuse newspaper with
tabloid.

The reader is urged to go back to the beginning of this article and
read the quotation from Kierkegaard once again. He emphasizes thought
over speech. In book after book Kierkegaard bemoaned the absence of
contemplation in modern life, criticizing, among other things, the
numbing effect of technology and commerce.

If one is able to think one's thoughts freely, one would not partake
of vulgarity, or imagine that one's own freedom can be earned at the
cost of that of others. One would never mistake power for freedom. The
former is a zero-sum game, the latter is not, for it implies that the
freedom of each is contingent on the freedom of all.

To have freedom of speech in a time of remarkable censorship and
relentless thought control exercised by the powerful Western media on
behalf of their corporate interests is a recipe for certain disaster.
This is certainly one of the lessons to be learned.

It also demonstrates how dangerous illusions of freedom, when it is
confused with power, are. The cartoons of Mohammed are thoughtless and
vulgar, and only serve to show the absence of inner freedom in the
so-called free societies of the modern world. For European newspapers
outside Denmark to have reprinted the cartoons after three months (when
the matter had not really had much effect outside Denmark until last
week) is a sign of an infantile disorder in the public discourse of the
West, not to speak of a terrifying cultural bankruptcy. The disease has
now traveled westward from the US. It demonstrates the growing
immaturity of a decadent polity. The 18th-century Enlightenment is but
a shriveled memory, prey to Mammon.

Now how well do Danes know their cultural past, if the thoughts of
their finest thinker sound alien to them today? And are Muslims to be
blamed if Westerners have themselves allowed the commerce of decadent
capitalism to make them forget some of best features of their
intellectual heritage?

Aseem Shrivastava is an independent writer. He can be reached at
aseem62@yahoo.com .

February 07, 2006, 7:54 a.m.

The Clash to End All Clashes?

Making sense of the cartoon jihad.

In belated response to a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed
published in a Danish paper and subsequently reprinted across Europe,
scenes of outrage filed out of London, Beruit, and Damascus, among
other cities this weekend. Flags and embassies burned. Placards (in
London!) read: "Behead those who insult Islam."

In light of the anger unleashed, National Review Online asked some
experts on Islam and/or the Mideast for their read on what's going on
and what can/should be done. We asked each: Is this a clash of
civilizations we're watching? What can be done? By Muslims? By everyone
else?

Mustafa Akyol

As a Muslim myself, I understand the disgust of Muslims around the
globe at the Euro-cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad. A deep
respect for God, His revelations, and His prophets is a hallmark of the
Islamic faith. In the Muslim culture there are no jokes about God; we
take Him and His religion quite seriously. And we abhor those who
ridicule them.

However, this sensitivity does not justify the violent, uncivilized
rampage that we are now seeing across the Islamic world. They threaten
and hurt innocent non-Muslims and do more harm to Islam than any
cartoon could do.

Moreover, their reaction is not what the Koran tells Muslims to do
in the face of mockery. Early Muslims were ridiculed very often by
pagans, and the Koran suggested a civilized disapproval: "When you hear
Allah's verses being rejected and mocked at by people, you must not sit
with them till they start talking of other things." (4/140) And
although the current cartoon-avengers are filled with fury, the Koran
defines Muslims as "those who control their rage and pardon other
people, [because] Allah loves the good-doers." (3/134)

This rage, then, is not a theologically driven response, but an
emotional uproar by people who think that their faith and identity are
being insulted. It is in a sense a nationalist reaction — the nation
being the Muslim umma. (If this reaction were not nationalist, but
purely religious in nature, then it would also follow on the mocking of
Jesus Christ and Moses. After all, the Koran regards these holy men as
God's chosen messengers.)

All of this means that an Islamic argument against the current
"Islamic rage" can — and should — be brought up by Muslim scholars and
intellectuals. Their message should not be "Let's not take God so
seriously," but "This is not the way to honor Him."

Another interesting point in the whole cartoon hype is the
difference of attitude between the ultra-secular continental Europe and
the more God-friendly Anglo-Saxons. It is a notable fact that cartoons
were published and, in some cases, officially supported in countries
characterized by widespread atheism and deep-seated anti-clericalism.
Yet neither the religious U.S., nor the not-so-religious, but still
respectful, Britain joined them. Similarly, the Vatican and the
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of the world's
Orthodox Christians, along with many non-Muslim clerics, criticized the
cartoons for offending the Muslim faith. Believers respect each other's
beliefs about what is sacred.

Thus, if what we see is a clash of civilizations, the responsibility
lies in the hands of the extremists on both sides: those who insist,
"Yes, we have a right to ridicule God" and those who threaten, "We are
going to kill you for it." The rest could get along.

— Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish Muslim writer based in Istanbul, Turkey.
His website is located at www.thewhitepath.com.

Zeyno Baran

In their efforts to combat radical Islamist extremism, many Western
governments make a simplistic distinction between groups that use
violence and those that do not. Anxious to "beat the terrorists," they
ignore groups which, while forswearing violence for themselves, incite
others to carry out terrorist activities. This inability to recognize
that groups with differing tactical approaches nevertheless can have
similar ends has allowed radical organizations to operate with
near-impunity in dramatically escalating tensions between Muslims and
the West — tensions that only further the radicals' ultimate goal of a
clash of civilizations.

If the latest set of incidents stemming from the Danish publication
of cartoons of the prophet Muhammed is not a final wake-up call for a
change to this overly narrow approach, then it is difficult to see what
would be. Tolerated and sometimes legitimized by European governments,
"non-violent" groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) and even the
less-extremist International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) have been
free to encourage confrontation between Muslims and the West. In
Denmark, long a key target of HT, the group has called for the killing
of Danish Jews and of members of parliament. Meanwhile, at an
HT-organized demonstration in Britain outside the Danish embassy,
protesters dressed as suicide bombers and carried placards stating
"Butcher those who insult Islam." At the same time, a delegation of
Danish Muslims led by the Copenhagen imam Abu Laban, linked to IUMS
chair Yusuf Qaradawi, toured the Middle East to garner support and
orchestrate the mass protests seen over the past several days.

While common sense should have prevailed long ago in the West after
the cartoons were released — after all, when radicals are trying to
convince Muslims that the "war on terror" is really a "war on Islam," a
certain amount of prudence is required to avoid giving propaganda
victories to the enemy — the most important step now is to cease
tolerating intolerance. No Western (or Muslim) government should
tolerate appeals to kill others in the name of religion. The longer
such radicals who claim to speak for Muslims are allowed to do so
freely, and the longer they are legitimized by Western governments that
want to "develop open channels" to the Muslim community, the more
demonstrations, riots, and killings we will see. After all, these
protests and attacks were not committed "spontaneously" by Muslims, but
were encouraged by radical groups — groups that can, with the right
approach, be defeated.

— Zeyno Baran is director of international-security and energy programs
at the Nixon Center.

Rachel Ehrenfeld

Facing what seems to be the rising clash of civilizations between
the Muslim world and Western democracies, the leaders of the Muslim
communities in Europe and elsewhere should seize the opportunity to
demonstrate their commitment to the democratic values they claim to
respect and advocate. They should call immediately and publicly on
their Muslim communities to stop the violent demonstrations and the
death threats against those who published the cartoons about Mohammed.
All leaders of Muslim communities should publicly condemn Hezbollah
chief Hassan Nasralla who argued, "If there had been a Muslim to carry
out Imam Khomeini's fatwa against the renegade Salman Rushdie, this
rabble who insult our Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway and France
would not have dared to do so."

The riots started after Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to
Denmark; after Sheikh Osama Khayyat, imam of the Grand Mosque in
Makkah, praised on national Saudi television the Saudi government for
its action; and after Sheikh Ali Al-Hudaify, imam of the Prophet's
Mosque in Medina, called "upon governments, organizations and scholars
in the Islamic world to extend support for campaigns protesting the
sacrilegious attacks on the Prophet."

President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address praised
the Saudis for taking "the first steps of reform — now it can offer its
people a better future by pressing forward with those efforts." This
gives the Saudis a unique opportunity to lead the Muslim world towards
tolerance, and prove that Islam is a religion of peace. For example,
the Saudis should announce that they will immediately allow Christians
and Buddhists who work in the Kingdom to hold prayer services. We can
only hope the Saudis surprise us and rise to the challenge.

— Rachel Ehrenfeld is author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed
— and How to Stop It, Director of American Center for Democracy, and a
member of the Committee on the Present Danger.

Mohamed Eljahmi

The violence, intimidation and threats about the Danish cartoons
show that neither the U.S. nor the West can afford baby steps when it
comes to political and economic reforms in the Arab world. It is sad to
note that the U.S. has allowed Arab autocrats to dictate the terms of
political reforms. Despots like Qadhafi and Mubarak continue to be
marketed as models, the first for giving up his WMD program and the
second for winning a sham election. To Liberal Arabs, it is no surprise
that Qadhafi closed his embassy in Denmark, Mubarak used his media and
rhetoric to inflame the public and sparked the boycott, the Saudis
boycotted the products and the Syrians torched the Danish embassy.
Liberal Arabs know that Arab despots work harmoniously and each has a
scripted role, because their survival depends on jointly oppressing
dissidents and sedating the less educated.

In Arab societies, mob-mentality rules and the individual has no
right, because according to Salafism, the whole defines the part. In a
free society, the part defines the whole, therefore, the economic pie
is bigger and people care about better schools for their children,
gender equality, the elderly, the handicapped, and other issues that
make government accountable to its people. In free society, religion is
an individual choice and there are political and legal guarantees that
protect individual rights. In the Arab world the Koran rules, thus it
is impossible to go against the mob or argue with the divine. In
Mubarak's Egypt, kidnapping of Coptic women and forcing them to convert
to Islam is not offensive. In Qadhafi's Libya the desecration of Jewish
cemeteries or grotesquely forcing Italians to exhume the bodies of
their dead and take back to Italy is acceptable.

If the Bush administration and the West are serious about advocating
for reform, then they must stop letting the despots dictate the terms
of reform, because political reforms in the Arab world are not luxury
but they are essential for American and world security.

— Mohamed Eljahmi is a senior software engineer with over 22 years of
experience in the software industry, where he has worked in design and
in development of software applications. He is a Libyan American, who
is advocating for genuine political reforms in Libya. Eljahmi has lived
in the U.S. since 1978 and has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since
1990.

Basma Fakri

The Danish cartoons were published in the name of freedom of speech.
They reminded me of the infamous Salman Rushdie story and the strong
reaction at the time from Iran.

Understanding and tolerance are most needed when dealing with
different cultures. This is not a matter of freedom of speech — it was
a matter of insulting others' religion and beliefs. Religion is a very
sensitive issue that needs to be addressed delicately. Unfortunately,
certain newsmakers enjoy drawing attention to themselves by being
shocking.

However, violence is definitely not the right response. I do wish
that Muslims had just ignored the cartoons, or had used the media to
express their strong opposition to the cartoon and perhaps publicly
boycotted Danish products.

There is a big confusion between terrorism and Islam. Not all
Muslims are terrorists. Unfortunately, some extremists are using the
religion of Islam to achieve their own goals. There is nothing in Islam
that encourages killing or terrorizing innocent people. And the
reaction to the cartoons that started this recent string of protests is
not helping matters.

— Basma Fakri is president and Co-founder of the Women's Alliance for a
Democratic Iraq.

Farid Ghadry

The event that launched this worldwide protest by Muslims over the
cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad as a terrorist was the pulling
of the Saudi ambassador from Denmark, a mere four months after the
printing. The effect will change the landscape for both Arab
oil-producing countries and terrorism-sponsored states.

Oil-producing Saudi Arabia is also the guardian of the two Holy
Cities of Mecca and Medina. With oil, Saudi Arabia is able to influence
the West, and with its guardianship of these cities, it is able to
control the movement of 1.3 billion Muslims. This centralization of
power gives Saudi Arabia vast powers that are having an effect on
civilizations across the globe.

The Wahhabi-dominated Saudi Arabia, adhereing to a movement that
originated in the center of the country, controls oil in the east and
Mecca and Medina in the west. But even within their own borders, the
Wahabis have a geographic Achilles' heel in the west of the country;
and this is exacerbated when one considers Jordan, as well as the
history of the Hashemite family (today's Jordan), which, up until the
turn of the 20th century, controlled Mecca and Medina instead of the
Saudis.

It is important for all Muslims that Mecca and Medina either be
returned to the Hashemite family or be guarded by an international
council elected by the 56 countries of the Organization of Islamic
Conferences. The few leaders of 25 million Muslims should not control
the fate of another 1.3 billion. Making Mecca and Media be for Muslims
more like what the Vatican is for Catholics would go a long way toward
giving all Muslims a say in their own affairs and charting a new
direction for Islam.

Terrorist states will use Islam, as Syria did, to impose its will on
the West. Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and many others are watching how Syria
used the cartoons to launch an attack against Western assets and
values. This is the beginning of what promises to be an unstoppable
weapon of rogue states, used to inflict pain, through violence, on
other civilizations.

— Farid Ghadry is president of the Reform Party of Syria.

Mansoor Ijaz

In order to prevent idolatrous misconceptions, it is forbidden in
Islam to depict the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) in any way.
But Muslims greatly weakened Islam's message of tolerance and
forgiveness last week with their hysterical and criminally violent
behavior in response to European media outlets' printing and reprinting
twelve cartoon caricatures depicting the Prophet (PBUH) in an
unflattering light.

The cartoons were offensive and wrong. But the Muslim world's
explosive reaction demonstrates once again the failure of Islam in the
modern age — its adherents are prepared to expend seemingly infinite
energy in defense of religious beliefs not many of them are prepared to
practice. Rectifying the hypocrisy that riddles Islam's efforts to be
portrayed in a better light is the fundamental issue at stake for
Muslims, not the freedom of the press or the defense of our Prophet
(PBUH) through violence and anger.

Muslim leaders must confront their demons and reform Islam from
within, rather than defending what is indefensible from outside. They
must reduce the impulse for Islam's followers to be their own worst
enemies by acting in ways that betray the traditions and teachings of a
great religion, while giving ammunition to those who seek to portray
them in a negative light.

It is simply unacceptable that while hundreds of millions of Muslims
live in squalid conditions throughout the world, Islam's so-called
guardians bask in the sunshine of resorts from Marbella to Cannes, and
their children waste away national wealth in casinos and nightclubs
from Geneva to Las Vegas. The money spent by one member of a Middle
Eastern royal family on vacation at a Geneva hotel and casino for one
week could feed thousands of Palestinian children for one year — such
is the magnitude of hypocrisy in the Muslim world today.

Saudi Arabia's Custodian of the Holy Mosques, Abdullah bin Abdul
Aziz, should set the example for reformation. He should invite the
Danish and Norwegian prime ministers to Riyadh and educate his
Scandinavian guests about why there is need to protect Islam's message
against idolatrous misinterpretations. He should then listen carefully
to his guests about why freedom of expression, as offensive as it was
in this case, must be insured by Western governments, whose primary
responsibility is to defend their citizens' rights and freedoms. In
this way, he would demonstrate Islam's fundamental thirst for giving
and receiving knowledge, its capacity for forgiveness, and its core
value of tolerance, rather than allowing mass hysteria to define
Islam's message.

Toleration asks us as citizens of an integrated world not to insult one
another's religion. Freedom demands that we be allowed to reject the
societal norms of others, and even to insult them, as Muslims often do
when they burn an American flag or set fire to an effigy of a political
leader they loath. Eliminating the hypocrisy between toleration and
freedom should be Islam's goal.

— Mansoor Ijaz is an American Muslim of Pakistani origin.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

We are in the midst of an Intifada designed to remake Europe in a
manner more in line with the creed of its religious Muslim minority.
Placing respect for Islam above freedom of the press would be one such
change. Using state power to limit freedom of speech would be another.
Europe has three options. It can agree to accommodate Muslim demands,
disengage from the Middle East, or join the American struggle to
democratize the Middle East. Let me outline briefly the meaning of each
choice.

Accommodation or appeasement would not mean just agreeing to a few
minor legal or behavioral changes. Note that the abstention of the
British press from publishing the cartoons, the plans to rewrite
British law to prevent insults to Islam, and the British government's
strong condemnation of the publication of the cartoons did little to
moderate the stance of British Muslims. Instead, British citizens were
treated to marches celebrating those who blew up the London subway
system.

Disengagement is the road Israel eventually chose, and the road an
increasing number of Europeans would like to take. This would mean
closing European borders to any additional Muslim immigrants, deporting
illegals, and undertaking a vigorous program of forced integration. It
also means precluding Turkish entry into the EU. Indeed, it means
erecting a new iron curtain between Europe and the Middle East.

Reengagement would mean joining the U.S. in selling democracy to the
Middle East in the manner the U.S. sold democracy to Europe in the
fifties. Then, Communism presented the same challenge Islamism is
presenting today. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The secret is
to dare to make the people of the Middle East the same promise the U.S.
made the Europeans during the years of the Marshall Plan: Follow us and
your lives will be radically better. It was a promise kept. If you
doubt this, just watch the 1952 documentary entitled Struggle for Men's
Minds. It was made to explain to Americans the reasons it is worth
their while to use their tax dollars to finance selling democracy in
Europe. It focused on Italy, which then looked as undeveloped and
chaotic as Iraq looks today, and it outlines the strategies the U.S.
used to combat the rising tide of Communism there. If I were a Western
leader, I would not only watch, it but make all my staff do so too. For
when all is said and done, this is the only strategy which will provide
prosperity, peace, and security to both Europe and the Middle East.

— Judith Apter Klinghoffer, Fulbright professor at Aarhus University,
Denmark, is the author of Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East: Unintended
Consequences co-author of International Citizens' Tribunals: Mobilizing
Public Opinion to Advance Human Rights and History News Network
blogger.

Clifford May

It is not a "clash of civilizations" that is taking place. It is a
clash between civilization and barbarism — which currently expresses
itself most forcefully and lethally as Militant Islamism.

Civilized people — whether Christian, Muslim, or Jew — do not
respond to an offense by torching embassies, stoning churches, and
calling for offenders to be beheaded.

Of course, most Muslims are not doing that — most Muslims are
neither barbarians nor extremists. But most of the money and power in
Muslim societies today is in the hands of Islamists or of dictators who
are only too eager to harness anti-Western animus for their own
purposes.

By persuading so many people — Muslims and non-Muslims alike — that
the cartoons in question "insult Islam," Militant Islamists have
achieved a victory.

Few dare argue that the cartoons do not insult Islam — that they
insult only Militant Islamism. Yet, surely that would be the most
obvious interpretation of a cartoon showing Mohammed wearing a bomb in
place of a turban. If such groups as al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas had
not committed countless acts of violence in the name of Islam, such an
image would make no sense.

Similarly, the cartoon showing Mohammed saying that heaven was
running out of virgins is most obviously interpreted as a commentary on
the unprecedented frequency of suicide bombings being carried out by
Militant Islamists. Why would such a cartoon insult peace-loving
Muslims who would never consider strapping on a bomb belt in the
expectation that mass murder will bring rewards in the next world?

Many commentators have charged protesters with hypocrisy, noting —
correctly — that venomous characterizations of Jews and Christians are
routinely on display in Arab and Muslim countries. But hypocrisy is
professing beliefs that one does not actually hold. The Militant
Islamists are doing no such thing. What they profess and what they
believe are identical. It's simply this: Infidels must not insult
Islam. But Muslims may insult infidels. The Islamists are not arguing
for Islam's equality among the world's great religions. They are
insisting that Christians, Jews, and others acknowledge Islam's
superiority, its status as the one true faith. They are quite clear on
this. If we refuse to hear what they are saying, that is our fault and
our problem.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is
president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy
institute focusing on terrorism.

Ramin Parham

Are we witnessing a clash of civilizations ignited by the Danish
caricatures?

Civilization, says the dictionary, is defined as "an advanced state
of human society in which a high level of culture, science, industry,
and government has been reached".

As a French and U.S.-educated Iranian, I seriously doubt that, with
the exception of secular Turkey, one could find among Islamic countries
anything even close to that definition. Pre-Islamic Persian and Islamic
civilizations are today nothing but history.

The Danish caricatures have the merit of underlining the above point
from a different angle: A so-called civilization whose foundations are
shaken with a few drawings is anything but a civilization!

Twenty-seven years after the islamist revolution in Iran; 17 years
after Khomeini's fatwa against the Indian-born British writer Salman
Rushdi; 15 years after the slaying of Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese
translator of The Satanic Verses; an entire new Middle East is being
born in pain. At this critical juncture, we should all keep in mind a
few basics:

First, painless birth is a chemical fantasy.

Second, Muslims will achieve nothing by self-complacency.

Third, readjusting democracies to new necessities is a legitimate
problematic for those adhering to common secular values within a trust
environment.

Forth, democracies were born out of the Enlightenment, the
Lumières, and the Aufklärung, that is the personal liberty
of thought and the sum of the public, universal and free usages of
reason. The price tag to enter this elite club is high in terms of
sacrifice. Iran has reached the necessary level of cultural complexity.

Fifth, the West should catalyze the democratic maturation of the Muslim
East in the common interest of all.

Last but not least, there is no better candidate than a free Iran to
champion that cause.

— Ramin Parham is an independent commentator based in Paris.

Daniel Pipes

It certainly feels like a clash of civilizations. But it is not.

By way of demonstration, allow me to recall the similar
Muslim-Western confrontation that took place in 1989 over the
publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses and the
resulting death edict from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. It first
appeared, as now, that the West aligned solidly against the edict and
the Muslim world stood equally with it. As the dust settled, however, a
far more nuanced situation became apparent.

Significant voices in the West expressed sympathy for Khomeini.
Former president Jimmy Carter responded with a call for Americans to be
"sensitive to the concern and anger" of Muslims. The director of the
Near East Studies Center at UCLA, Georges Sabbagh, declared Khomeini
"completely within his rights" to sentence Rushdie to death. Immanuel
Jakobovits, chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, wrote that "the book
should not have been published" and called for legislation to proscribe
such "excesses in the freedom of expression."

In contrast, important Muslims opposed the edict. Erdal
Inönü, leader of Turkey's opposition Social Democratic party,
announced that "killing somebody for what he has written is simply
murder." Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in
literature, called Khomeini a "terrorist." A Palestinian journalist in
Israel, Abdullatif Younis, dubbed The Satanic Verses "a great service."

This same division already exists in the current crisis. Middle
East-studies professors are denouncing the cartoons even as two
Jordanian editors went to jail for reprinting them.

It is a tragic mistake to lump all Muslims with the forces of darkness.
Moderate, enlightened, free-thinking Muslims do exist. Hounded in their
own circles, they look to the West for succor and support. And, however
weak they may presently be, they eventually will have a crucial role in
modernizing the Muslim world.

— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of
Miniatures.

Nina Shea

Blasphemy laws are among the greatest impediments to democratic
evolution in the greater Middle East. Not limited to criticisms of
Islam's Prophet Mohammed, or the realm of the Divine, they are also
used by prevailing powers and those with Islamist agendas to crush
political dissidents and scholars engaged in intellectual debate.
Carrying the death penalty or other harsh punishment and inviting
vigilante retribution, the crime of blasphemy has become an
indispensable tool of repression in that region.

Saudi Arabia regularly brings blasphemy charges (or one of its
variants, such as "using Western speech") against those who speak out
of turn. Recent examples include democracy activists who proposed
substituting a written constitution for the Kingdom's slogan that "the
Koran is the constitution," and a school teacher who instructed his
class to be tolerant of Jews.

Revolutionary Iran, which has put to death thousands for blasphemy
and shut down hundreds of newspapers, has turned the practice into an
art form. One who made the mistake of translating into Farsi the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights was killed on the Declaration's
50th anniversary. Another famous case of a Shiite professor highlighted
the usefulness of the charge to silence critics of clerical rule. At
his July 2004 trial, he declared he was being punished for "the sin of
thinking."

Afghanistan still criminalizes blasphemy. A journalist who argued
against the criminalization of heresy was found guilty and barely
escaped with his life. Karzai's only female cabinet member was charged
with blasphemy for criticizing blasphemy and other Islamic rules, and,
though never tried, was ousted by death threats.

Once blasphemy is introduced into the law, it becomes almost
impossible for the system to reform itself. Western leaders should be
pressing these Middle East governments to drop their legitimization of
blasphemy, not contemplating whether to adopt it here.

— Nina Shea is the director of Freedom House's Center for Religious
Freedom.

Bat Yeor

We have always been in a clash of civilizations. The fact that our
European leaders choose to deny the reality is not an argument to
dismiss what is so obvious to everyone. But having a clash of
civilizations does not entail a global war of all against all. On the
contrary, it imposes a need for a deeper dialogue — a type of dialogue
that has been prevented by our leaders, busy to protect the virtual and
sanitized image of Islam they tried to impose on Europeans for 30
years, through a culture of self-flagellation, self-guilt,
obfuscations, denials, obsequiosity, anti-semitism and
anti-Americanism: what we call politically correct and totalitarian
language.

I see the cartoons affair as an inter-European conflict also. A revolt
to assert, within the law, Western values of freedom of opinions,
speech, and religion — the basic values of our civilization, acquired
through centuries of conflicts, sacrifices, and courage. It is possible
that people could be displeased by some analyses, but this cannot
suppress the right to speak them. In the last century Europeans have
endured three totalitarian regimes: Nazism, Fascism, Communism. They
are not ready to accept a fourth one: sharia rule. However much I
understand Muslim's sensibilities, I expect Muslims who chose to come
and live in Europe to respect European sensibilities for their values
and laws.

In this affair I see also the dangerous role played by some Muslim
groups in Europe. They instigate, like the Danish imam Ahmed Abu Laban
and others, hatred among Muslims and excesses against Europe, and then
they pose as indispensable peace intermediaries between Europe and the
Muslim world. This unhealthy situation is much developed in Europe due
to the weakness and lack of resolve of our leaders, who have not the
courage to deal with the security problems they have themselves
created. These leaders have the duty to solve these problems by the
rule of law, and not by deferring them to a third party, as if
Europeans cannot express their rights except by begging through a
benevolent Muslim channel. In this respect, the cartoons affair
expresses the rejection by some of the EU's lack of political
transparency and its contempt for its European constituency from which
it takes billions of euros to give to the Arab world, and particularly
to the corrupt and terrorist Palestinian Authority.

A lot can be achieved toward reconciliation by a free debate. This
would trigger an inner Muslim reformist movement, which could then
destroy the jihadic framework through which a majority of Muslims
relate to the infidels even today.

— Bat Yeor is the author of studies on the conditions of Jews and
Christians in the context of the jihad ideology and the sharia law.
Recent books include: Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide
and Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, both at Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press.

CULTURE CLASH

Bonfire of the Pieties

Islam prohibits neither images of Muhammad nor jokes about religion.

BY AMIR TAHERI

Wednesday, February 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

"The Muslim Fury," one newspaper headline screamed. "The Rage of
Islam Sweeps Europe," said another. "The clash of civilizations is
coming," warned one commentator. All this refers to the row provoked by
the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish
newspaper four months ago. Since then a number of demonstrations have
been held, mostly--though not exclusively--in the West, and
Scandinavian embassies and consulates have been besieged.

But how representative of Islam are all those demonstrators? The
"rage machine" was set in motion when the Muslim Brotherhood--a
political, not a religious, organization--called on sympathizers in the
Middle East and Europe to take the field. A fatwa was issued by Yussuf
al-Qaradawi, a Brotherhood sheikh with his own program on al-Jazeera.
Not to be left behind, the Brotherhood's rivals, Hizb al-Tahrir
al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and the Movement of the Exiles
(Ghuraba), joined the fray. Believing that there might be something in
it for themselves, the Syrian Baathist leaders abandoned their party's
60-year-old secular pretensions and organized attacks on the Danish and
Norwegian embassies in Damascus and Beirut.

The Muslim Brotherhood's position, put by one of its younger
militants, Tariq Ramadan--who is, strangely enough, also an adviser to
the British home secretary--can be summed up as follows: It is against
Islamic principles to represent by imagery not only Muhammad but all
the prophets of Islam; and the Muslim world is not used to laughing at
religion. Both claims, however, are false.

There is no Quranic injunction against images, whether of Muhammad
or anyone else. When it spread into the Levant, Islam came into contact
with a version of Christianity that was militantly iconoclastic. As a
result some Muslim theologians, at a time when Islam still had an
organic theology, issued "fatwas" against any depiction of the Godhead.
That position was further buttressed by the fact that Islam
acknowledges the Jewish Ten Commandments--which include a ban on
depicting God--as part of its heritage. The issue has never been
decided one way or another, and the claim that a ban on images is "an
absolute principle of Islam" is purely political. Islam has only one
absolute principle: the Oneness of God. Trying to invent other
absolutes is, from the point of view of Islamic theology, nothing but
sherk, i.e., the bestowal on the Many of the attributes of the One.

The claim that the ban on depicting Muhammad and other prophets is
an absolute principle of Islam is also refuted by history. Many
portraits of Muhammad have been drawn by Muslim artists, often
commissioned by Muslim rulers. There is no space here to provide an
exhaustive list, but these are some of the most famous:

A miniature by Sultan Muhammad-Nur Bokharai, showing Muhammad riding
Buraq, a horse with the face of a beautiful woman, on his way to
Jerusalem for his M'eraj or nocturnal journey to Heavens (16th
century); a painting showing Archangel Gabriel guiding Muhammad into
Medina, the prophet's capital after he fled from Mecca (16th century);
a portrait of Muhammad, his face covered with a mask, on a pulpit in
Medina (16th century); an Isfahan miniature depicting the prophet with
his favorite kitten, Hurairah (17th century); Kamaleddin Behzad's
miniature showing Muhammad contemplating a rose produced by a drop of
sweat that fell from his face (19th century); a painting, "Massacre of
the Family of the Prophet," showing Muhammad watching as his grandson
Hussain is put to death by the Umayyads in Karbala (19th century); a
painting showing Muhammad and seven of his first followers (18th
century); and Kamal ul-Mulk's portrait of Muhammad showing the prophet
holding the Quran in one hand while with the index finger of the other
hand he points to the Oneness of God (19th century).

Some of these can be seen in museums within the Muslim world, including
the Topkapi in Istanbul, and in Bokhara and Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and
Haroun-Walat, Iran (a suburb of Isfahan). Visitors to other museums,
including some in Europe, would find miniatures and book illuminations
depicting Muhammad, at times wearing his Meccan burqa (cover) or his
Medinan niqab (mask). There have been few statues of Muhammad, although
several Iranian and Arab contemporary sculptors have produced busts of
the prophet. One statue of Muhammad can be seen at the building of the
U.S. Supreme Court, where the prophet is honored as one of the great
"lawgivers" of mankind.

There has been other imagery: the Janissaries--the elite of the
Ottoman army--carried a medallion stamped with the prophet's head (sabz
qaba). Their Persian Qizilbash rivals had their own icon, depicting the
head of Ali, the prophet's son-in-law and the first Imam of Shiism. As
for images of other prophets, they run into millions. Perhaps the most
popular is Joseph, who is presented by the Quran as the most beautiful
human being created by God.

Now to the second claim, that the Muslim world is not used to laughing
at religion. That is true if we restrict the Muslim world to the
Brotherhood and its siblings in the Salafist movement, Hamas, Islamic
Jihad and al Qaeda. But these are all political organizations
masquerading as religious ones. They are not the sole representatives
of Islam, just as the Nazi Party was not the sole representative of
German culture. Their attempt at portraying Islam as a sullen culture
that lacks a sense of humor is part of the same discourse that claims
"suicide martyrdom" as the highest goal for all true believers.

The truth is that Islam has always had a sense of humor and has
never called for chopping heads as the answer to satirists. Muhammad
himself pardoned a famous Meccan poet who had lampooned him for more
than a decade. Both Arabic and Persian literature, the two great
literatures of Islam, are full of examples of "laughing at religion,"
at times to the point of irreverence. Again, offering an exhaustive
list is not possible. But those familiar with Islam's literature know
of Ubaid Zakani's "Mush va Gorbeh" (Mouse and Cat), a match for
Rabelais when it comes to mocking religion. Sa'adi's eloquent soliloquy
on behalf of Satan mocks the "dry pious ones." And Attar portrays a
hypocritical sheikh who, having fallen into the Tigris, is choked by
his enormous beard. Islamic satire reaches its heights in Rumi, where a
shepherd conspires with God to pull a stunt on Moses; all three end up
having a good laugh.

Islamic ethics is based on "limits and proportions," which means that
the answer to an offensive cartoon is a cartoon, not the burning of
embassies or the kidnapping of people designated as the enemy. Islam
rejects guilt by association. Just as Muslims should not blame all
Westerners for the poor taste of a cartoonist who wanted to be
offensive, those horrified by the spectacle of rent-a-mob sackings of
embassies in the name of Islam should not blame all Muslims for what is
an outburst of fascist energy.

Last week the publication I work for, the German newsweekly Die Zeit,
printed one of the controversial caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.
It was the right thing to do.

When the cartoons were first published in Denmark in September, nobody
in Germany took notice. Had our publication been offered the drawings
at that point, in all likelihood we would have declined to print them.
At least one of them seems to equate Islam with radical Islamism. That
is exactly the direction nobody wants the debate about fundamentalism
to take -- even though the very nature of a political cartoon is
overstatement. We would not have printed the caricature out of a sense
of moderation and respect for the Muslim minority in our country. News
people make judgments about taste all the time. We do not show sexually
explicit pictures or body parts after a terrorist attack. We try to
keep racism and anti-Semitism out of the paper. Freedom of the press
comes with a responsibility.

But the criteria change when material that is seen as offensive becomes
newsworthy. That's why we saw bodies falling out of the World Trade
Center on Sept. 11, 2001. That's why we saw the pictures from Abu
Ghraib. On such issues we print what we usually wouldn't. The very
nature of the discourse is to find parameters of what is culturally
acceptable. How many times have we seen Janet Jackson's breast in the
course of a discussion of the limits of family entertainment? How many
times have we printed material that Jews might consider offensive in an
attempt to define the extent of anti-Semitism? It seems odd that most
U.S. papers patronize their readers by withholding cartoons that the
whole world talks about. To publish does not mean to endorse. Context
matters.

It's worth remembering that the controversy started out as a
well-meaning attempt to write a children's book about the life of the
prophet Muhammad. The book was designed to promote religious tolerance.
But the author encountered the consequences of religious hatred when he
looked for an illustrator. He could not find one. Denmark's artists
seemed to fear for their lives. In turning down the job they mentioned
the fate of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, murdered by an Islamic
fundamentalist for harshly criticizing fundamentalism.

When this episode percolated to the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, the
paper's cultural editor commissioned the caricatures. He wanted to see
whether cartoonists would self-censor their work for fear of violence
from Muslim radicals. Still, the European media ignored this story in a
small Scandinavian country. It took months, a boycott of Danish
products in the Arab world and the intervention of such champions of
religious freedom as the governments of Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and
Libya (all of which withdrew their ambassadors from Copenhagen) for
some European papers to reconsider their stance on the cartoons. By
last week it was not an obscure topic anymore but front-page news. And
it wasn't about religious sensibilities as much as about free speech.
That's when the cartoons started to show up in papers all over Europe.

Much of the U.S. reporting about the fracas made it appear as if
Europeans just don't get it -- again. They struggle with immigration.
They struggle with religion. They struggle with respect for minorities.
And in the end they find their cities burning, as evidenced in Paris.
Bill Clinton even detected an "anti-Islamic prejudice" and equated it
with a previous "anti-Semitic prejudice."

The former president has turned the argument upside down. In this jihad
over humor, tolerance is disdained by people who demand it of others.
The authoritarian governments that claim to speak on behalf of Europe's
supposedly oppressed Muslim minorities practice systematic repression
against their own religious minorities. They have radicalized what was
at first a difficult question. Now they are asking not for respect but
for submission. They want non-Muslims in Europe to live by Muslim
rules. Does Bill Clinton want to counsel tolerance toward intolerance?

On Friday the State Department found it appropriate to intervene. It
blasted the publication of the cartoons as unacceptable incitement to
religious hatred. It is a peculiar moment when the government of the
United States, which likes to see itself as the home of free speech,
suggests to European journalists what not to print.

The writer is Washington bureau chief of the German newsweekly Die Zeit.

Cartoon conflicts

Tariq Ramadan

To describe the clash over the Danish depictions of the prophet as one
between freedom and dogma will only fan the flames

Monday February 6, 2006

In Copenhagen last October, as demonstrations provoked by the Danish
satirical cartoons about Islam were starting, a reporter from the
newspaper that published them told me how intensely the editorial staff
had debated whether to go ahead, how uncomfortable many of them had
been about the whole issue and, at the same time, how surprised they
had been by the strong reaction from Muslims and the Arab embassies. At
the time, however, the tension seemed likely to remain within Danish
borders.

To Danish Muslims denouncing this as an instance of racism - a
provocation capitalised upon by the ever expanding far right in the
country - my advice was to avoid reacting emotionally, to try to
explain quietly why these cartoons were offensive and neither to
demonstrate nor to risk activating mass movements that could prove
impossible to master. At the time, a resolution seemed to be at hand.

One might ask, then, why it is that three months later, some find it
in their interests to pour fuel on the fire of a controversy, with
tragic and potentially uncontrollable consequences? A few Danish
Muslims visited Middle Eastern countries and ramped up the resentment:
governments in the region, only too happy to prove their attachment to
Islam - to bolster their Islamic legitimacy in the eyes of the public -
took advantage of this piece of good fortune and presented themselves
as champions of a great cause. On the other side, the controversy was
just what some politicians, intellectuals and journalists needed to
paint themselves as champions of the equally great struggle for freedom
of expression and as resistance fighters against religious obscurantism
in the name of western values.

We are facing an incredible simplification, a gross polarisation:
apparently a clash of civilisations, a confrontation between
principles, with defenders, in one corner, of inalienable freedom of
speech and, in the other, of the inviolable sacred sphere. Presented in
such terms, the debate has unfortunately become a battle of wills, and
the question becomes: who will win? Muslims, wanting apologies,
threaten to attack European interests, even to attack people; western
governments, intellectuals and journalists refuse to bend under
threats, and certain media outlets have added to the controversy by
republishing the cartoons. Most people around the world, observing
these excesses, are perplexed: what sort of madness is this, they ask?

It is critical we find a way out of this infernal circle and demand
from those stoking this fire that they stop their polemics at once and
create a space for serious, open, indepth debate and peaceful dialogue.
This is not the predicted clash of civilisations. This affair does not
symbolise the confrontation between the principles of Enlightenment and
those of religion. Absolutely not. What is at stake at the heart of
this sad story is whether or not the duelling sides have the capacity
to be free, rational (whether believers or atheists) and, at the same
time, reasonable.

The fracture is not between the west and Islam but between those who,
in both worlds, are able to assert who they are and what they stand for
with calm - in the name of faith or reason, or both - and those driven
by exclusive certainties, blind passions, reductive perceptions of the
other and a liking for hasty conclusions. The latter character traits
are shared equally by some intellectuals, religious scholars,
journalists and ordinary people on both sides. Facing the dangerous
consequences these attitudes entail, it is urgent we launch a general
call for wisdom.

In Islam, representations of all prophets are strictly forbidden. It is
both a matter of the fundamental respect due to them and a principle of
faith requiring that, in order to avoid any idolatrous temptations, God
and the prophets never be represented. Hence, to represent a prophet is
a grave transgression. If, moreover, one adds the clumsy confusions,
insults and denigration that Muslims perceived in the Danish cartoons,
one can understand the nature of the shock expressed by large segments
of Muslim communities around the world (and not only by practising
Muslims or the radicals). To these people, the cartoons were too much:
it was good and important for them to express their indignation and to
be heard.

At the same time, it was necessary for Muslims to bear in mind that,
for the past three centuries, western societies - unlike
Muslim-majority countries - have grown accustomed to critical, ironical
- even derisive - treatment of religious symbols, among them the pope,
Jesus Christ and even God. Even though Muslims do not share such an
attitude, it is imperative they learn to keep an intellectual distance
when faced with such provocations and not to let themselves be driven
by zeal and fervour, which can only lead to undesirable ends.

In the case of these cartoons - as clumsy as they are idiotic and
malicious - it would have been, and it would remain, preferable if
Muslims expressed their values and grievances to the public at large
without clamour, better if they paused until such a time as calm was
possible. Instead, what is welling up today within some Muslim
communities is as unproductive as it is insane: the obsessive demands
for apologies, boycotting of European products and threats of violent
reprisals are excesses that must be rejected and condemned.

However, it is just as excessive and irresponsible to invoke the "right
to freedom of expression" - the right to say anything, in any way,
against anybody. Freedom of expression is not absolute. Countries have
laws that define the framework for exercising this right and which, for
instance, condemn racist language. There are also specific rules
pertaining to the cultures, traditions and collective psychologies in
the respective societies that regulate the relationship between
individuals and the diversity of cultures and religions.

Racial or religious insults are not addressed in the same way in the
various western societies: within a generally similar legal framework,
each nation has its own history and sensitivities; wisdom requires
acknowledging and respecting this reality. The reality is also that the
Muslim presence within western societies has changed their collective
sensitivity. Instead of being obsessed with laws and rights -
approaching a tyrannical right to say anything - would it not be more
prudent to call upon citizens to exercise their right to freedom of
expression responsibly and to take into account the diverse
sensitivities that compose our pluralistic contemporary societies?

This is not a matter of additional laws restraining the scope of free
speech; it is simply one of calling upon everybody's conscience to
exercise that right with an eye on the rights of others. It is more
about nurturing a sense of civic responsibility than about imposing
legislation: Muslim citizens are not asking for more censorship but for
more respect. One cannot impose mutual respect by means of legislation;
rather one teaches it in the name of a free, responsible and reasonable
common citizenship.

We are at a crossroads. The time has come for women and men who reject
this dangerous division of people into two worlds to start building
bridges based on common values. They must assert the inalienable right
to freedom of expression and, at the same time, demand measured
exercise of it. We need to promote an open, self-critical approach, to
repudiate exclusive truths and narrow-minded, binary visions of the
world.

We are in dire need of mutual trust. The crises provoked by these
cartoons shows us how, out of "seemingly nothing", two universes of
reference can become deaf to each other and be seduced by defining
themselves against each other - with the worst possible consequences.
Disasters threaten that extremists on both sides would not fail to use
for their own agendas. If people who cherish freedom, who know the
importance of mutual respect and are aware of the imperative necessity
to establish a constructive and critical debate, if these people are
not ready to speak out, to be more committed and visible, then we can
expect sad, painful tomorrows. The choice is ours.

· Tariq Ramadan is visiting fellow at St Antony's College,
Oxford University and senior research fellow at the Lokahi Foundation,
in London

Creating Outrage

Meet the imam behind the cartoon overreaction.

By Lorenzo Vidino

Confused by the wave of protests, threats, boycotts, and attacks
against diplomatic facilities that have shaken their idyllic
tranquility after the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet
Mohammed on Jyllands-Posten, the Danes are asking themselves questions.
They wonder if an attack will take place in their country, as
threatened by various jihadi groups, and if freedom of speech is in
jeopardy. But a more immediate question is puzzling some: Why has the
outrage of the Muslim world exploded only now, in February, when the
cartoons were published last September? At the time of the initial
publication, international media had reported news of the blasphemous
caricatures, not only in Danish, but also in English. Yet nothing
happened, aside from timid protests from the Muslim community of the
tiny Scandinavian kingdom. So what is different about the situation
now? More than the question, it is the answer that is keeping a good
chunk of Denmark's political and cultural elite awake at night. The
recent anti-Danish emotional wave coming from the Muslim world, in
fact, is far from a spontaneous reaction, but it has been cunningly
orchestrated by a knowledgeable insider, a real snake in the grass who
has been creeping in Denmark for the last 15 years.

Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, a 60-year-old Palestinian imam who has
been residing in Copenhagen since 1993, has become over the last few
years the face of Islam in Denmark, creating his own persona of a
moderate cleric who seeks dialogue but who is victimized by the
widespread "racism" of the Danes. Despite his poor command of the
Danish language, Abu Laban is a frequent guest on Danish television and
in meetings with government officials, where he claims to represent the
voice of the local Muslim community. Even though part of the
establishment has always looked at him with suspicion (Prime Minister
Rasmussen has always refused to meet with him), Danish intelligentsia
has made him a celebrity — so much of one that even the Washington Post
recently profiled him as "one of Denmark's most prominent imams."

But Abu Laban's real face has now been revealed. In September, the imam
immediately condemned Jyllands-Posten's cartoons and led protests at
the local level. Danish politicians and media, busy with local
elections, ignored him. But Abu Laban is not the kind of person who
gives up easily. After having contacted ambassadors from Muslim
countries in Copenhagen, he put together a delegation with the goal of
touring the Middle East to "internationalize this issue so that the
Danish government would realize that the cartoons were not only
insulting to Muslims in Denmark but also to Muslims worldwide," as he
explained in an interview with "Islam Online". The delegation met with,
among others, Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar
Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, and Sunni Islam's most influential
scholar, Yusuf al Qaradawi. The delegation showed each of these leaders
the 12 cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten, along with others that
had never been published by any Danish publication. The new cartoons
were every more offensive, as showing the Prophet Mohammed with a pig
face or having sexual intercourse with a dog. While the delegation
claimed that the differentiation was pointed out to their
interlocutors, there is no other evidence, and rumors about the more
blasphemous images began to circulate in the Middle East. Moreover, the
booklet that was presented by the delegation contained several other
lies about the "oppression" of Muslims in Denmark, claiming Muslims do
not have the legal right to build mosques and are subjected to
pervasive racism.

With emotions about the cartoons mounting, Qaradawi, the real brains of
the Muslim Brotherhood's international network and a key opinion maker
in the Middle East thanks to his weekly show on al Jazeera, attacked
Denmark directly, warning that an apology would not be sufficient, and
that "a firm stance" should have be taken by the Danish government. As
Prime Minister Rasmussen refused to intervene, referring to the
cherished tradition of freedom of the press in his country, Qaradawi
and his ilk unleashed their propagandistic war against Denmark. Abu
Laban, from his mosque in the Copenhagen suburb of Nørrebro, is
now happily reaping the fruits of his hard work. But, in a
quintessential exercise in taqiya (double-speak), Abu Laban has tried
to hide his satisfaction to the Danes. Speaking on Danish television,
Abu Laban has wept crocodile tears, condemning the boycott of Danish
goods and the other consequences of his actions. Yet, interviewed by al
Jazeera, the imam has said just the opposite, praising the outrage of
the Muslim world at his adoptive country.

So just who is Abu Laban? The Danes are slowly getting a fuller
portrait. Friday night, Danish state television DR broadcasted a long
report on him and Danes have begun to understand more about the
self-proclaimed voice of Islam in Denmark. According to DR,
Intelligence documents reveal that Abu Laban has been in close contact
for years with members of various terrorist organizations, and in
particular with leaders of the Egyptian Gamaa Islamiya. In the
beginning of the 1990s, in fact, several leaders of the Gamaa escaped
the long arm of the Egyptian mukhabarat and relocated to Europe.
Copenhagen became the new hometown of two of the group's leaders, Ayman
al Zawahiri, currently serving as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, and
Talaat Fouad Qassimy. From the quiet of the Scandinavian capital, the
men published Al Murabitoun, the Gamaa's official publication. Abu
Laban worked as a translator and distributor of the publication, which
glorified the killing of Western tourists in Egypt and urged the
annihilation of Jews in Palestine. Then Abu Laban worked closely with
Said Mansour, a Moroccan man currently charged in Denmark for running a
publishing house that distributed jihadi material.

All of this is not news to Danish security officials, but now Danes are
slowly becoming aware of the facts. And Abu Laban's celebrated celeb
status is about history in Denmark. Danes have no more patience for
those who preach love in one language and war in another, those who
publicly play the role of the victim, demand tolerance and then
secretly incite hatred. While much of Europe has been asleep at the
wheel, oblivious to the monumental threat radical Islam poses to its
future, at least one country is increasing awake. Denmark's first
battle is domestic, unmasking the enemy's fifth column inside its
borders. As embassies burn, the rest might want to catch on, too.

— Lorenzo Vidino is a senior terrorism analyst at the Investigative
Project and author of the book Al Qaeda in Europe: The New Battleground
of International Jihad.

Cartoon Debate

The case for mocking religion.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Saturday, Feb. 4, 2006, at 4:31 PM ET

As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and
self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this
week's international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also
accidentally accurate.

"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as
anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."

Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was
reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the
country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an
administration. What does he mean "unacceptable"? That it should be
forbidden? And how abysmal that a "spokesman" cannot distinguish
between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people.
However, the illiterate McCormack is right in unintentionally comparing
racist libels to religious faith. Many people have pointed out that the
Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of
the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is
hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where
the state decides what is published or broadcast. However, when Muslims
republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story
of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies
of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance)
and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the
second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as
snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a
rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful
Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most
of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same
coin, and it still shows.

Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of
solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but
religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all
expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is
constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. You can be
sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their
share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and messianic Israeli
settlers, and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this
would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken.

Which is what taboos are for. Islam makes very large claims for itself.
In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at
all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male
mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol
or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a
good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the
right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible
warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy
coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all
I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute
immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and
you will do it on pain of death.

I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I
chance to find "offensive." ( By the way, hasn't the word "offensive"
become really offensive lately?) The innate human revulsion against
desecration is much older than any monotheism: Its most powerful
expression is in the Antigone of Sophocles. It belongs to civilization.
I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or
mosque or to relieve myself on a "holy" book. But I will not be told I
can't eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a
regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value
the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It
is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the
exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the
suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger.
But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random
violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and
holding him hostage, or violating diplomatic immunity by attacking the
embassy or the envoys of even the most despotic Islamic state, or
making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to
faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings. The babyish
rumor-fueled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the
Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and
selfish childhood of our species.

As it happens, the cartoons themselves are not very brilliant, or very
mordant, either. But if Muslims do not want their alleged prophet
identified with barbaric acts or adolescent fantasies, they should say
publicly that random murder for virgins is not in their religion. And
here one runs up against a curious reluctance. … In fact, Sunni Muslim
leaders can't even seem to condemn the blowing-up of Shiite mosques and
funeral processions, which even I would describe as sacrilege. Of
course there are many millions of Muslims who do worry about this, and
another reason for condemning the idiots at Foggy Bottom is their
assumption, dangerous in many ways, that the first lynch mob on the
scene is actually the genuine voice of the people. There's an insult to
Islam, if you like.

The question of "offensiveness" is easy to decide. First: Suppose that
we all agreed to comport ourselves in order to avoid offending the
believers? How could we ever be sure that we had taken enough
precautions? On Saturday, I appeared on CNN, which was so terrified of
reprisal that it "pixilated" the very cartoons that its viewers needed
to see. And this ignoble fear in Atlanta, Ga., arose because of an
illustration in a small Scandinavian newspaper of which nobody had ever
heard before! Is it not clear, then, that those who are determined to
be "offended" will discover a provocation somewhere? We cannot possibly
adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the
attempt.

Second (and important enough to be insisted upon): Can the discussion
be carried on without the threat of violence, or the automatic resort
to it? When Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, he did
so in the hope of forwarding a discussion that was already opening in
the Muslim world, between extreme Quranic literalists and those who
hoped that the text could be interpreted. We know what his own reward
was, and we sometimes forget that the fatwa was directed not just
against him but against "all those involved in its publication," which
led to the murder of the book's Japanese translator and the near-deaths
of another translator and one publisher. I went on Crossfire at one
point, to debate some spokesman for outraged faith, and said that we on
our side would happily debate the propriety of using holy writ for
literary and artistic purposes. But that we would not exchange a word
until the person on the other side of the podium had put away his gun.
(The menacing Muslim bigmouth on the other side refused to forswear
state-sponsored suborning of assassination, and was of course backed up
by the Catholic bigot Pat Buchanan.) The same point holds for
international relations: There can be no negotiation under duress or
under the threat of blackmail and assassination. And civil society
means that free expression trumps the emotions of anyone to whom free
expression might be inconvenient. It is depressing to have to restate
these obvious precepts, and it is positively outrageous that the
administration should have discarded them at the very first sign of a
fight.

Something's Rotten in the State of Denmark

What do Arab journalists think of the Islamic cartoon scandal?

By Daniel Kimmage

Friday, Feb. 3, 2006

The controversy over the 12 caricatures of Muhammad published by the
Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten has exploded into a global scandal,
complete with angry demonstrations, defiant republications of the
cartoons in newspapers across Europe, diplomatic démarches and
withdrawn Arab envoys, a boycott of Danish goods in the Middle East,
gunmen at the European Union's office in Gaza, and calls for calm amid
fears of more tumult to come. (You can see the cartoons here.)

News agencies settled on "Muslim outrage" as a shorthand to describe
the uproar over the cartoons. This is accurate but tells only part of
the story. In the Arab world, press reactions revealed additional
nuances in what is the biggest international wrangle over freedom of
expression and respect for Islam since Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.

The caricature that has sparked the loudest outcry depicts Muhammad
wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. Muhammad al-Hamadi, writing in the
United Arab Emirates' Al-Ittihad, argued that the perception of a link
between Islam and terrorism is not merely a figment of European
cartoonists' imaginations: "The world has come to believe that Islam is
what is practiced by Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi, the Muslim
Brotherhood, the Salafis, and others who have presented a distorted
image of Islam. We must be honest with ourselves and admit that we are
the reason for these drawings. Any harm to the Prophet or Islam is a
result of Muslims who have come to reflect the worst image of Islam and
certain Arabs who have not conveyed faithfully the life and biography
of the Prophet."

Al-Hamadi criticized Denmark as well for picking the wrong issue for a
stand on principle: "If Denmark has tried to teach Arabs and Muslims a
lesson in respect for the country's constitution and its laws, I
believe it did not succeed in choosing the right issue. The
justification that one must respect the constitution that guarantees
freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to denigrate
others, was not appropriate—this is the trap that Denmark fell into."

Abdallah Bin Bakhit, writing in Saudi Arabia's Al-Jazirah, used the
popular boycott of Danish goods to direct subtle criticism at the Arab
world's weak institutions: "All of the pressure that we see being
exerted on the Danish government and on Danish public opinion is simply
spontaneous pressure, supported by a few businessmen, that began with
the man in the street and will end with him. The Danish goods that are
today disappearing from store shelves will be back in a few days as
though nothing had happened. Muslims are the strongest people in the
world when it comes to individual reactions and the weakest when it
comes to institutionalized operations. Events have taught us that every
reaction to such attacks on Islam (wherever they may take place) ends
with institutionalized responses aimed at sapping the popular, local
anger, but not at treating the issue in the place where it broke out."

In an op-ed in the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi, Muhammad Karishan
drew a slightly different, but no less critical, lesson from the
boycott, contrasting it favorably with the ineffectual efforts of Arab
diplomats: "It is now clear that the pictures of Danish goods being
thrown from supermarket shelves are a thousand times more eloquent than
the efforts of Arab ambassadors in Denmark to meet with the prime
minister, who refused even to receive them."

Egypt's Al-Ahram celebrated the boycott in an editorial, calling it a
"civil-society initiative" and warning that Muslim governments should
leave the action to their citizens to avoid a detrimental multilateral
escalation.

Sati Nur al-Din had little use for either cartoonists or boycotts in an
op-ed in Lebanon's Al-Safir. Calling the Danish newspaper's decision to
publish the caricatures a "grievous error, most likely intentional,"
Nur al-Din chided Arabs for a response that "that does not become them
or their history and does not contribute to fixing their strained
relations with the West." Looking back, Nur al-Din reminded readers
that the Ayatollah Khomeini used the Rushdie affair to undermine
Iranian revolutionaries seeking a rapprochement with the West. By way
of contrast, he concluded, "The Arabs and Muslims who are moving today
against Denmark, its products, and embassies, are not exploiting the
caricature issue for any political goal, as Khomeini did. Rather, they
are sending what is by any standard the wrong message, choosing a
foolish pretext for what is really a caricature of a battle."

A persistent theme in the press's response was the gap between European
concern over anti-Semitism and indifference to the denigration of
Islam. Abdallah Bin Bakhit asked, "While the Danish government claims
that the publication of the caricatures falls under freedom of opinion
as guaranteed by the Danish Constitution, would it respond with the
same claim if a researcher had published a report on the Holocaust
challenging the official opinion imposed by Jewish organizations?"

Husayn Shabakshi wrote in the pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat,
"Anti-Semitism is unacceptable, and the Danish caricatures would not
have been published if they had depicted a Jewish rabbi, for example."
He continued, "Jews have succeeded in criminalizing any critical
mention of Jews as anti-Semitism, subjecting anyone who engages in this
to harsh punishments. Today, it is necessary for serious Islamic
organizations to make concerted efforts in the international arena to
criminalize infringements on Islam."

Taking a broader view, Ahmad Abd-al-Husayn noted in Iraq's Al-Sabah
that a collision of two basic rights lies at the heart of the
controversy: "In the name of freedom, which is one human right,
dignity, another sacred right, is trampled. What has gone wrong? Which
should win out? Freedom of expression and action, the highest of the
arts and most precious endowment of humankind on this earth, or the
free will to sanctify the symbols and beliefs that order the existence
of nations and cultures?" The author continued, "The shameful drawing
by this Dane is nothing but an extreme example, one of numerous
examples in which freedom stands in opposition to itself. For the free
press has allowed al-Qaida to reach every home via television and the
Internet. But we know what al-Qaida thinks of the free press. It is
sufficient to recall the obliteration of television in Kabul when it
was ruled by the 'commander of the faithful.' " In closing,
Abd-al-Husayn warned, "The denigrators of the prophets are not free.
They are using freedom as a weapon in a war that no one will win."

Daniel Kimmage is the Central Asia analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty.

What did you think of this article?

Febuary 06, 2006, 9:45 a.m.

Daned If You Do...

The real questions to consider in the face of “spontaneous” outrage.

By Emanuele Ottolenghi

Not everything that is right or legal is necessarily wise.

Perhaps it was not so wise to reproduce, all over the European press,
twelve Danish cartoons depicting Islam's prophet Mohammad in ways that
many Muslims say is offensive. But it was certainly within the
boundaries of freedom of speech.

European responses to the events surrounding the cartoons'
publication have mainly focused on the above. Was it right? Should
there be limits? Should there be editorial self-restraint? Should there
be an apology? Who should apologize?

Interestingly, continental Europe has published, Great Britain has not
(nor has America). Who understands the Middle East better? The EU or
the Anglo-Saxon world? Who does the Arab world hate these days? The
evil empire and its lesser imperialist arm? Or the Arab-friendly
Europeans with their "more even-handed approach" to the region?

For lo and behold, it is "Death to France" they are chanting now, it is
Norwegian flags they are burning (there's always a flags' vendor at
hand in the Middle East, whenever "spontaneous" rage erupts).

A sudden reversal of fortunes, to say the least.

But in these days of rage, there is little room for Schadenfreude.
Besides, I am not so sure that "I told you so" will open European eyes.
Again, interestingly, it is the right-of-center press in Europe that is
publishing the cartoons, it is the left-of-center press that is
decrying their publication. The right says "freedom of speech" and
"Western values," the Left says "multiculturalism." The politically
correct may pause and think twice though, given that their once
cherished slogans are increasingly the monopoly of the right and their
obsession with multiculturalism is putting them on a dangerous slippery
slope where their traveling companions are not merely the pious and the
aggrieved, but also the less than lucid Holocaust-denying,
Homosexual-hating, Jew-bashing, woman-oppressing Islamists who did not
call for merely "respect" this weekend, but also for "beheading all
those who insult Islam." Beware who your friends are, no less than who
are your enemies.

It seems to me that the real debate should not have focused so much on
the boundaries of free speech as on the wisdom of reproducing those
cartoons in other Western publications (though important they are).
After all, Western media routinely publish things that are not so wise
or sensitive to expose. From intelligence leaks to mockery of foreign
nations, passing through derision of religion and religious beliefs
(and those who entertain them), there is plenty to choose from. Was
anti-Americanism — so rampant in many European media especially in the
last four years — always wise? Is the anti-Semitism that occasionally
surfaces in commentary on the Middle East something wise?

But should the answer be censorship? Obviously not. Should the
aggrieved parties torch embassies and media centers, or threaten to
behead any repeat offender? Again, no. In a truly free society,
grievances find legitimate ways of expression and sometimes, if their
case is sound, of redress.

In the West we do not believe only in freedom of speech, no matter how
silly the speech is. We also believe in the power of ideas to expose
the silliness of some speech through robust, but civilized debate. Just
like Danish cartoonists had the right to draw twelve cartoons depicting
and deriding Mohammed, so are those who feel insulted by their content
entitled to march on the streets, assemble in front of embassies, write
to newspapers, petition, and go on the air voicing their grievance. As
long as it is peaceful and within the legal boundaries that separate
speech from incitement, decrying the content of any news item is a
legitimate exercise of democratic rights. All that is part of the
democratic ethos, and as long as the debate remains within these
boundaries, we should let it happen, in the perhaps naively optimistic
belief that wisdom will eventually emerge from this exchange.

No wisdom will prevail, though, if debate is conducted by violent
means. A violent response that aims to intimidate and muzzle the West
on anything concerning the sensitivities of one specific community is
unacceptable and makes the dispute over the cartoons a sideshow. The
only right course of action now, even if one finds those cartoons silly
or in bad taste, is to stand by the publisher, the Danish government,
the right of other papers to publish, and the general principle of
freedom that makes Europe still a free continent and the Arab Middle
East still a sea of dictatorships. Recalling ambassadors was
disgraceful. Burning embassies was medieval. Boycotting businesses was
mafia-like. And not formulating a joint European response (not yet, one
hopes) — let alone expressing solidarity to the Danes — was
pusillanimous. It is not Denmark, at this point, that owes an apology
to Islam. An apology is owed to Denmark, to Europe, and to the freedom
that these assaults aim to deny.

Two considerations arise from this state of affairs: One, if we
determine that the yardstick for allowable and unallowable speech is
someone else's sensitivity, pretty soon there will be nothing left to
talk about. Sensitivity is a subjective trait and the law, with all its
shades and penumbras and variations in interpretation, needs a pretty
objective, abstract, and general standard. The minute we allow feelings
to determine the boundaries of freedom, we will all be slaves.

Second, the reaction that swept across the Muslim world and among
Muslims in Europe is symptomatic of a culture that denies democracy and
fails to comprehend the mechanisms of a free society. The attacks on
the Danish government and state have no precedent and find no
justification, given that the target of Muslim wrath is a newspaper,
not government policy. To ask for the Danish government to take steps
in order to avoid further violence and rescind the sudden boycott on
its products means that those who are asking think the free press of
Denmark does and will do what the Danish government will tell them to
do. That is how the press works in the Arab world. Not in Europe. Not
since 1945 at least, and hopefully not anymore. Anyone who thinks
government interference with the workings of our societies' press is
bad should be outraged. Instead, most of those who routinely exalt the
values of freedom of speech in Europe these days are busy siding with
the enemies of freedom in the name of community relations.

Still, there remains an open question. Why all this fury now? When the
cartoons appeared, there was hardly any commotion outside Denmark and
only a few local disturbances. Yes, we know that the outrage was
largely cooked up by a party of traveling clerics who put together a
brochure designed to enrage, especially given the addition of three
particularly vicious fake pictures, and showed it around the Middle
East. Still, the timing is, to say the least, suspect. Could it be
that, as David Conway of Civitas suggests, this has little to do with
Muhammad the Prophet and much to do with Iran the nuclear power? Iran,
after all, has just been refereed to the U.N. Security Council on
account of its nuclear program. And guess what: When Iran finds itself
in the eye of the storm, which, of all countries, will be chairing the
U.N. body? Denmark.

What a strange coincidence, given that not much of this fury looks
spontaneous.

— Emanuele Ottolenghi teaches Israel studies at Oxford University.

Religion of Peace” or Riots

Cartoon chaos.

By George Neumayr

Uproars over criticism of radical Islam almost always follow the same
ironic trajectory. First, someone makes an observation about the
violent character of Mohammed or Islam. Then what follows? Violent
protests and rioting, which serve to illustrate and confirm vividly the
criticism that occasioned them.

Only radical Muslims would consider rioting a rational rebuttal to
descriptions of Islam as violent. What other religious group riots or
issues death threats after it is criticized? It is precisely because
Christianity is so tame that Western liberals often feel safe to
lampoon its history as violent. They wouldn't dare level similarly
harsh criticism of Islam.

One of the unstated reasons for hesitating before calling radical Islam
violent — the reason the fog of political correctness thickens around
it — is that it does contain elements of violence. Western society
falls silent lest its criticism of Islam result in an explosion of
anger validating the criticism.

Still, here and there, a few politically incorrect nonconformists do
blurt out the obvious, and then chaos ensues, not to mention the usual
fatuous and fashionable outrage, which invariably comes from
journalists who report the maverick's criticism as "inflammatory" and
then make sure that Muslims are properly inflamed by broadcasting to
the ends of the earth the criticism under the most unfavorable and
polemical light.

In recent years, Brigitte Bardot and Orianna Fallaci, among others,
have been the targets of intense backlash by Muslims for daring to call
Islam intolerant. Yet as the press reported these controversies,
usually hot with anger at this "western insensitivity," it never
occurred to these journalists that the backlash they were dousing —
Muslim clerics called for Bardot and Fallaci to be imprisoned — simply
added evidence to Bardot's and Fallaci's case.

Now this disturbingly ironic spectacle is on display in Scandinavia. In
early January, Magazinet, an obscure evangelical Christian newspaper in
Norway, reprinted cartoons depicting Muhammed as a dangerous man of
arms. Even before embassies burned this weekend, one could have just
looked at the picture above last week's Washington Post story about the
controversy to figure Magazinet had a good point: Palestinian militants
were screaming and burning a Danish flag, all because of a cartoon in a
Scandinavian journal few people have seen. According to the Post's
story, the editor of the newspaper, Vebjoern Selbekk, had by then
received "15 death threats and more than 1,000 hate letters." Boy, how
could he have ever thought that Islam is a religion that spread by
force of arms?

By liberalism's standards, Islam, as it is understood by some of its
chief clerics, is easily the most illiberal religion on earth. But most
European liberals manage to overlook this stark incongruity, even as
they cast Christianity, which looks soft in comparison to Islam, in a
malign light. The doctrines of Islam are often interpreted by liberals
in the most generous manner possible while their own historic religion
enjoys no such benign interpretation from them.

But it is notable that Scandinavia, the most liberal of regions, is
producing at least a few liberals who are able to see the plain truth:
that radical Islam is fundamentally incompatible with their cherished
secular humanism. Italian journalist Orianna Fallaci, an old-style
liberal, has been banging on this drum for quite some time. Most
European liberals, however, have studiously ignored her. Perhaps
Denmark, with a reported 200,000 Muslims who have shown little to no
interest in integrating into its liberal society, has grown weary of
sustaining the illusion that radical Islam poses no threat to
liberalism.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has so far refused to
apologize for the cartoon, according to the press, and has commented
pointedly that "freedom of speech is absolute. It is not negotiable."

Carsten Juste, the editor of the Danish daily that originally published
the cartoons of Mohammad (from which Magazinet reprinted them), is
showing some fight too. He says the cartoons were "within the
constitution, the Danish penal code and international convention....It
is not a dictatorship like Saudi Arabia that is going to dictate our
editorial line here in Denmark."

Meanwhile, Saudi supermarkets are banning Danish products. Arla Foods,
a Danish company, told the Washington Post that its sales have come to
a "standstill." But will Islamic fury at these cartoons mean that
Muslim immigration into Scandinavia may come to a standstill? Whether
or not radical Muslims are that upset remains to be seen.

Yes, crude caricatures of Islam are improper. Yes, multitudes of
Muslims are peace-loving and decent. But it is hard not to notice that
Islamic protests whipped up by militants such as this one are more
opportunistic than sincere, and that they are designed to stifle
legitimate criticism of radical Islam's undeniably violent history and
designs — criticism that receives fresh evidence from the wildly
intemperate anger it stokes.

— George Neumayr is a writer living in the Washington, D.C. area.

February 06, 2006, 8:23 a.m.

Drawing Fire

Opportunity knocked down in the case of the prophetic Danish
cartoon.

It says something for the cowardice, duplicity, and wishful thinking of
too many of the West's politicians (and much of its media) that one of
the most striking illustrations of the crisis in its relations with the
Islamic world has come from twelve mediocre cartoons.

Prophetic Beginnings

The broad outlines of this saga ought to be familiar, wearily,
painfully familiar, but they are still worth tracing back to the
beginning, both to clear up some of the distortions that have grown up
around it, and to see what the very nature of the controversy itself
can tell us. The whole thing began when the Danish children's writer,
Kåre Bluitgen, complained last autumn that he was unable to find
anyone willing to illustrate his forthcoming book about the Prophet
Mohammed. He had, he said, been turned down by a number of artists
frightened by the prospect of reprisal if they ignored the traditional
Muslim prohibition on pictorial depiction of Islam's founder. Twenty or
thirty years ago, such fears would have been no more than paranoia, but
that was before Denmark, like elsewhere in Europe, found itself with a
large, and incompletely integrated, Muslim population. Back then Salman
Rushdie had not yet been driven underground by an Ayatollah's death
warrant. Back then Theo Van Gogh was still alive.

Self-censorship is tyranny's sorry, trembling little helper, and so
it's to its credit that the right-of-center (which, in Denmark, is not
very right at all) Jyllands-Posten, one of the country's major
newspapers, picked up Bluitgen's story. What it did with it was ornery,
well-intentioned and somewhat naïve. Forty cartoonists were
invited to give their own interpretation of the prophet. Twelve, a
little more than a third, accepted, for 800 Danish crowns (roughly
$125) apiece. As we now know, the result was a storm of protest in the
Muslim world, and in recent days, pushback in the West. The cartoons
have been republished all over Europe and the twelve cartoonists are
now, like Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Salman Rushdie before
them, learning what it is to live in hiding. They have reportedly
opposed the republication of their work. It's difficult to blame them.
They have been given a terrible demonstration of what it takes to
survive in an era rapidly tumbling back into the pre-modern.

The Veto Power of Thin-Skinned Fanatics

As for the cartoons themselves, they come from all perspectives. One
satirizes Jyllands-Posten, another Mr. Bluitgen. None are very funny,
or, by Western standards, remarkable. It's telling that the delegation
of Danish Muslims who visited a number of Middle Eastern countries to
stir up trouble over the cartoons, had to boost their dossier of
grievance with three additional (and genuinely disgusting) pictures
that Jyllands-Posten had never even seen and whose provenance remains,
let's be polite, unclear. To try and compare the actions of
Jyllands-Posten, as Bill Clinton effectively did, with the race-baiting
traditions of Der Sturmer is to reveal an ignorance of history and a
disdain for free speech that disgraces the office he once held. Even
the most notorious of the cartoons, the one that shows Mohammed with a
bomb decorated with Islamic text in his turban, can be seen not as an
insult, but as a challenge to Muslims to demonstrate that (as is indeed
certainly the case) there is far more to their faith than the
atrocities that have recently defaced it. Harsh? Maybe, but it was also
in the Western tradition of vigorous, free discussion. And as such it
should be defended.

Ideally, the publication of these cartoons would have prompted Muslims
to ask themselves why Islam, one of the world's great religions, could
come to be seen in such a bad light. It hasn't worked out that way.
Protests have been followed by boycotts, bluster and, now, violence.
The protests and the boycotts are fine. They are all part of the
debate. Violence, and the threat of violence, is something else, and,
as many more moderate Muslims understand, it is doing far more damage
to the reputation of Islam than a few feeble caricatures.

Needless to say, the theocracies, kleptocracies, and autocracies of the
Middle East, always anxious for something, anything, to distract
attention from their own corruption, uselessness, and thuggery, have
played their own, typically malign, part in whipping up anger.
Ambassadors have been recalled. Denunciations thunder down. Angry
resolutions are passed. But amid all these calls for "respect" is there
any acknowledgement that many Islamic countries could do more, much
more, to respect the rights of those of different faiths to their own?
To take just one example, Egypt's ambassador to Copenhagen is
recommending that diplomatic action against Denmark should continue,
but her own country's persecuted Christian minority would be grateful
indeed if their troubles were confined to a few cartoons. Respect, it
seems, is a one-way street.

But that's what too many in the Muslim world have been taught to
believe, by multiculturalism as much as the mosque. In the cowed,
cowering Europe of recent years the idea that religious minorities have
a right not to be "offended," a nonsense notion that gives veto power
to the fanatic with the thinnest skin, has increasingly been allowed to
trump the far more fundamental right of others to speak their mind.
Writers have been prosecuted, plays have been tampered with, and works
of art withdrawn. Last week, the British House of Commons came within
one vote of passing a law that would almost certainly have made U.K.
publication of the Danish cartoons a criminal offense. It is a sign of
how far matters have been allowed to degenerate that the initial blunt
refusal of Denmark's prime minister to even hold a meeting with a
number of ambassadors from Islamic countries over the incident ("I will
not meet with them...it is so crystal clear what principles Danish
democracy is built upon that there is no reason to do so...As prime
minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press — nor do I want
such power.") was seen as shocking as it was.

Needless to say, there were others who did their best to ensure that
normal servility was resumed. While most Danes backed the prime
minister, a former foreign minister, a once-respected figure who has
long since become a flack for the Brussels establishment, donned
Neville Chamberlain's black jacket and pinstripes to denounce the
cartoons "as a pubescent demonstration of freedom of expression." The
U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote to the Organization of
Islamic Conferences (which, as it was perfectly entitled to do, had
complained about the cartoons) saying that she understood the OIC's
concerns, if not, it appeared, the right of free speech, and she was
far from being the only senior international bureaucrat to do so (and,
yes, naughty Kofi made sure to throw in a few weasel words of his own).
Closer to home, the EU's commissioner for Freedom, Security and Justice
denounced the cartoons as "inappropriate," an adjective as Orwellian as
his job description, an adjective that can only have encouraged those
out to bully the Danes.

In the end, it was left to other newspapers to rally round. With the
republication of the cartoons in the Christian journal, Magazinet, the
Norwegians were the first to support the Danes, a gesture
understandable in a country where the local publisher of Rushdie's
Satanic Verses had been fortunate to survive an assassination attempt
in 1993, but which was bound to inflame matters still further. And when
it did, other newspapers across Europe, in France, in Germany, in the
Netherlands, in Spain and elsewhere joined in, either republishing the
offending cartoons or, notably in the case of France's left-of-center
Le Monde, adding more of their own.

Going Forward. Or Backward

So, what now? Like it or not, the cozy, consensual, homogenous
Denmark of half a century ago has vanished, never to return, and, like
it or not, the old Europe shaped by Christianity, the Reformation, the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment now plays host to a large and growing
population with a very different intellectual and spiritual tradition.
And, in an age of global communication, the idea that these problems of
coexistence can be confined to one continent is an illusion. An insult
in Århus can reverberate in Damascus and Amman, and for that
matter, Kabul, Basra, and Baghdad too. It's this that explains why the
Bush administration, with hearts, minds and a war to win, condemned the
cartoons, and it's this, far less forgivably, that explains why
Turkey's (supposedly moderate) Islamist prime minister feels that he
has the right to tell the Danish press what it may or may not publish.

Of course the publication of those cartoons was (quite explicitly) a
provocation, but the furor that followed shows that it was an
acceptable thing to do. The editors of Jylland-Posten wanted to draw
attention to the fact that fears for the freedom of expression were
both real and realistic. They have succeeded on both counts. Europeans
realize now, if they were dim enough not to understand before, that
they are faced with two very different ways ahead. The first, and
better, alternative is to recognize that, to many, freedom of speech is
a value as important as religious belief may be to the faithful, and to
give it the protection it deserves. Reestablishing this badly eroded
principle will not be easy, but to fail to do so will be to empower the
fanatic to legislate for all.

The second alternative is, broadly speaking, for Europe to attempt to
buy social peace by muddling along as it does now, muzzling a little
speech here, rooting out a little liberty there. But this approach
isn't working now. There's no reason to think that doing more of the
same will prove any more effective in the future. Besides, at its
heart, this is a policy of surrender, submission and despair. It is a
refusal to accept that people can agree to disagree, and it is a
refusal to confront those who cannot. It foreshadows an era of neutered
debate, anodyne controversy, and intellectual stagnation. It will lead,
inevitably, to societies irrevocably divided into immovable blocs of
ethnicity and creed, carving up the spoils, waiting to take offense and
thirsting for the fight, which will one day come.

Despite some of the stirring statements in favor of free speech that
have been made over the last week the best bet is that Europe will
continue to slide into that second, dismal, alternative. The warning
signs are already there to see. Tony Blair's Labour government (again,
due partly to the presence of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
but, doubtless, due also to the presence of Muslim voters in many key
parliamentary constituencies) has been at pains to condemn the
cartoons, and Norway's governing left-wing coalition wasted no time in
distancing itself from Magazinet. Even Magazinet's editor has now
stumbled down the same sad route: "If I had dreamt of something like
this happening I would not have done it. It's out of control.''
Meanwhile, a number of the newspapers that have chosen not to run the
cartoons have done so explicitly on grounds of self-censorship, or,
rather, they claim, "restraint," or maybe "respect": Choose your own
alibi.

Even more ominously, at the prompting of our old friend, the EU's
commissioner for Freedom, Security and Justice, Brussels bureaucrats
are arranging a meeting for "experts" and "community leaders" (to be
held no later than the end of April) that will discuss some of the
issues arising out of this controversy. It is reported that, "proposals
to counter race and religious hatred [may be] dusted off." We can guess
where that might lead.

And as for where it all started, Jyllands-Posten has now announced that
it regrets having published the cartoons: "If we had known that it
would end with death threats and that the lives of Danish people could
be put at risk, we would have naturally not have published the
drawings." The paper apologized only for having underestimated the
extent to which Muslims revere their prophet, but then it added this,
"fundamentalist powers have prevailed over the freedom of
speech...Danish media will now be careful about expressing attitudes
that fundamentalists can misuse to create hate and bitterness."

We have lost our voice

Moderate Muslims, from Denmark to the Middle East, are caught in the
vice of a manufactured conflict

Tabish Khair in Aarhus

Tuesday February 7, 2006

The Guardian

When I first saw them, I was struck by their crudeness. Surely
Jyllands-Posten could have hired better artists. And surely cartoonists
and editors ought to be able to spot the difference between Indian
turbans and Arab ones. In some ways, that was the essence of the
problem to begin with. It is this patronising tendency - stronger in
Denmark than in countries such as Britain or Canada - that decided the
course of the controversy and coloured the Danish reaction.

One could see that the matter would take a turn for the worse when,
late last year, the Danish prime minister refused to meet a group of
Arab diplomats who wished to register their protest. In most other
countries they would have been received, their protest accepted. The
government would have expressed "regret" and told them it could not put
pressure on any media outlet as a matter of law and policy. In their
turn, having done their Muslim duty, these diplomats might have helped
lessen the reaction in their respective countries. By not meeting them,
the prime minister silenced all moderate Muslims just as effectively as
they would be later silenced by militant Muslims around the world.

Like many other moderate Muslims, I too have been silent on these
cartoons of the prophet Muhammad and the ensuing protests. Not because
I do not have anything to say, but because there is no space left for
me either in Denmark or in many Muslim countries.

This does not appear so to many Danes. Here the local controversy seems
to be raging between two "Danish Muslim" public figures: Abu Laban, the
Copenhagen-based imam who has coordinated much of the protest, and
Nasser Khader, a member of the Danish parliament. Khader, liberal,
clean-shaven, is posited against the bearded Abu Laban and seen as
standing on the side of such "Danish" values as freedom of speech and
democracy. He is supposed to represent sane and democratic Muslims. On
the other hand, there is repeated talk of kicking Laban out of the
country.

In actual fact, of course, both Khader and Laban make it even more
difficult for moderate Muslims to be heard. Laban is not afraid of
being kicked out of Denmark, because it is not his political territory.
Similarly, Khader does not depend on Danish Muslim votes for his
survival in politics; he depends on the votes of mainstream Danes, and
his politics are geared towards that end. The prime minister's refusal
to meet the diplomats was also partly the result of local political
considerations: his government is supported by the xenophobic and
anti-Islamic Danish People's party.

So much for Denmark, where complacency and smugness have reached
extraordinary heights. In Muslim countries too we meet a similar string
of local considerations. Surely the tensions between Hamas and Fatah
played a role in the disturbances on the West Bank? Surely, some of the
reactions - especially in Syria - were the working out of Islamic and
pro-Iraqi frustrations on one of the allies of the US's invasion of
Iraq?

One could, of course, follow the Qur'an's injunction against portraying
Allah or Muhammad without forcing it on people who do not share one's
faith. But then the question arises: why should people who do not share
one's faith bother with images of one's prophet? For the sake of
freedom of expression, said Jyllands-Posten. The only thing expressed
by the cartoons, however, was contempt for Muslims.

But why, you might ask, should Islamic fundamentalists be worried about
respect from a west that they mostly find unworthy of emulation? The
answer to this lies in the histories of Islamic fundamentalism and
European imperialism, aspects of which are horribly interlinked. As a
reaction to European imperialism and, later, a political development of
the west's fight against communism and socialism, Islamic
fundamentalism is a quintessentially modern phenomenon. Hence, in their
own way, Islamic fundamentalists are much more bothered about the
opinion of "the west" than a person like me!

The Danish government should have apologised long before it did - but
was right not to act against Jyllands-Posten. Freedom of expression is
necessary not because it is a God-given virtue, but because if you let
the authorities start hacking away at it you are liable to be left with
nothing. But along with the right to express comes the duty to consider
the rights of others. This applies as much to Jyllands-Posten as to the
mobs in Beirut.

Between the Danish government and Islamist politicians, between
Jyllands-Posten and the mobs in Beirut, between Laban and Khader, the
moderate Muslim has again been effectively silenced. She has been
forced to take this side or that; forced to stay home and let others
crusade for a cause dear to her - freedom - and a cultural heritage
essential to her: Islam. On TV she sees the bearded mobs rampage and
the clean-shaven white men preach. In the clash of civilisations that
is being rigorously manufactured, she is in between. And she can feel
it getting tighter. She can feel the squeeze. But, of course, she
cannot shout. She cannot scream. Come to think of it, can she really
express herself at all now?

· Tabish Khair is assistant professor of English at Aarhus
University, Denmark, and author of The Bus Stopped

When freedom gives in to fear

Kim Fletcher

Monday February 6, 2006

The Guardian

How do we resolve the row over newspaper publication of cartoons of
the Prophet? Perhaps we should start with an apology. Many journalists
on British newspapers dismiss their continental counterparts - possibly
owing to our chronic inability to read foreign languages - as
humourless and boring and ostentatiously politically correct. Their
bravery in publishing those cartoons warms our hearts and makes us
think again.

From our earliest days as cub reporters it is drilled into us that,
outside of the law, nothing stops a paper printing what it likes. The
quickest way to get a story from the magistrates courts into a local
newspaper is to ask the reporter to keep it out.

So why didn't British newspapers pile in to show solidarity with
Danes, French, Italians, Germans, Spanish, Dutch, Swiss and - bravest
of the brave - Jordanians over this important issue of press freedom?
The best Britain came up with was a web link in the Guardian directing
curious readers to the cartoons. Shouldn't we at least have followed
the lead of BBC and ITV news, which screened shots of the contentious
foreign coverage in order to explain the row?

The attractive explanation for our failure to do so is that papers do
not print things that their readers may find offensive. Andreas Whittam
Smith, the co-founder and former editor of the Independent, told BBC
viewers on Friday that this was an issue not of press freedom but of
taste and responsibility.

The less attractive explanation is pure pragmatism. Do you want a
protest greeting you next morning? Is it worth having production
disrupted for the next few months? How will Muslim newsagents react to
what you print? Freedom of the press is all very well, but newspapers
are commercial operations.

Not only that, but they should feel some responsibility for their
actions. We might ask Danish workers whose jobs are threatened by
Middle Eastern boycotts if they are happy to pay the price for press
freedom. Is the principle behind publication of offensive cartoons
important enough to have the Foreign Office spend the next few months
clearing up the mess?

Judgments are made at this pragmatic level all the time, sometimes for
the greater good, more out of self-interest. When the Sun lost readers
in Liverpool as a result of its coverage of the Hillsborough football
stadium disaster, it did not defend the principle of free speech. It
made a grovelling apology and spent the next 10 years sucking up to
Liverpudlians in an attempt to win them back.

Editors are conscious of the power of many groups, whether socially,
politically or religiously motivated, to affect the circulation of
their papers. All such groups have the right to voice whatever
opposition - within the law - they like. All such groups can call for
boycotts. The problem in this case is that you don't just get your
newspaper boycotted: the editor of the Norwegian newspaper Magazinet,
which was first to reprint the cartoons, said on Friday he had received
30 death threats.

It would be nice if we could dismiss all this, as Whittam Smith seemed
to be doing last week, as a matter of good manners. Unfortunately there
is a strand of Muslim opinion that questions not only our right to be
offensive but also our right to explore and debate these issues. Some
Muslim critics have differentiated between the publication of the
cartoons as a provocative gesture and their reproduction as a means of
explaining the row. But that was not a distinction that made much
impact on the small crowd that descended on the BBC last week after it
broadcast shots of the relevant continental papers.

And we should remember that, while critics have emphasised the
offensive nature of the cartoons at the centre of this row, many
Muslims demand that no image of the Prophet of any kind be published.
In 2001, for example, the Daily Mail commissioned the Cambridge
academic John Casey to write an essay on Islam. Casey's piece was
intelligent and sympathetic. Unaware, it seems, of the sensitivities,
the commissioning editor asked the picture desk to find a picture of
Muhammad to illustrate the piece. A handsome portrait appeared on the
page, to the fury of sections of the Muslim population.

At the Daily Telegraph, which produced a meticulously researched
supplement on Islam, the then editor Charles Moore was aware of the
sensitivities of picturing the Prophet. He was inclined to publish -
here was an illustration of the central figure in an historical account
- but decided the likely row would undermine the educational value of
the supplement.

That was another pragmatic decision, but we should worry that it had to
be taken. We would not publish other historical pieces without
illustrating the men and women concerned.

I suspect the truth is that many British journalists feel uncomfortable
with the accommodations we are already making, not because they think
it is the role of a free press to cause gratuitous offence, but because
we have accepted that a large group is to be treated with greater
circumspection for fear of what it will do if we don't.

This wasn't the time to go in for gestures, but there will be occasions
on which papers must act. As the Daily Telegraph put it: "There might
be circumstances in which the dictates of news left us with no choice
but to publish - and where the public interest was overwhelmingly
served by such an act, we would."

In the meantime, we should assert our freedoms in whatever ways we can.
I find I have spent a lot of time looking at the various images of the
Prophet available on the Google and Yahoo internet picture sites.

The west and orthodox Islam must step back from absolutist beliefs to
be able to live together

James Buchan

Monday February 6, 2006

The Guardian

The Scottish philosopher David Hume prefaced his Treatise of Human
Nature in 1739 with a quotation from the ancient Roman historian
Tacitus: "It is a rare and fortunate age when you may think what you
like, and can say what you think."

That was going it a bit. Notorious for his atheism, Hume was shunned
in Scottish society, denied a university post and twice threatened with
excommunication. All the same, he inaugurated a period in Britain where
the reasonable freedoms of ordinary people, including the freedom to
disbelieve in the supernatural, could be accommodated. That this change
passed without much violence or even bad feeling is the triumph of
modern British history. Hume's teaching and example influenced the
American constitution and its imitations.

In contrast, the Muslims who this weekend set fire to Danish diplomatic
missions in Damascus and Beirut because of the publication in Denmark
last September of caricatures of their prophet, are like Hume's
antagonists in the Scots church. For both, salvation demands an exact
adherence to the precepts of scripture. Tolerance of others' opinions
is backsliding. Deviation is a threat to the souls of the whole
community in a world that could end any day.

In orthodox Islam, liberty has the same meaning it had in
pre-Enlightenment Scotland. It is the freedom to practise the one true
religion without interference or insult. The liberties of the
Enlightenment - democracy, freedom of speech and the press, freedom of
association, scientific scepticism - are contradictory or meaningless.

Since the Qur'an and the anecdotes of the Prophet Muhammad known
collectively as the Sunna lay down an exact pattern of behaviour for
all people for all time, the desire to do or think or speak or vote
according to one's own fancy is not freedom but simply error that
threatens the entire community with damnation. If it is carried out by
someone born into the Muslim faith, it is apostasy punishable by death.

The conflict between these two notions of freedom has become fiercer
since the colonial era. Arabs first heard the word enlightenment, and
others such as liberty and equality, from Napoleon's officers in Egypt
in 1798. The words, and the notions they express, have always be
tainted by association with western encroachment.

Mohammed Atta, who led the 9/11 hijackers, saw that the west was the
soft underbelly of the secular regime of his homeland, Egypt, and
others in the Muslim world. Attacking the metropolises of the US and
forcing it to retaliate would undermine these regimes and oblige
ordinary Muslims to choose sides. His strategy has been taken up by
religious radicals among the Muslims in Europe.

On the western side, multiculturalism has proved a euphemism for hiding
heads in the sand. Islamic faculties at universities across Europe and
North America have still to regain their confidence after the assaults
of partisan half-scholars such as the late Edward Said.

There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance,
insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose
Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have
their own enlightenment.

Is it so painful not to insult other people's religious beliefs? Hume
lived on good terms with Presbyterian clergymen and never sought to
undermine their beliefs. It is a violation of natural liberty to show
this courtesy but no more, as Hume's friend Adam Smith put it in The
Wealth of Nations, than is "the building of party walls, in order to
prevent the communication of fire". And fire, after all, is what is
being communicated.

· James Buchan's Adam Smith and the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty
will be published in April by Profile Books

Threats that must be countered

Sarah Joseph

Friday February 3, 2006

The Guardian

The battle is set, of religious extremism versus freedom of speech.
These are the lines drawn, or so we are told, in the escalating
tensions worldwide surrounding the printing of images of Muhammad in
Denmark and elsewhere in Europe.

Although the media is only now picking up on this story, my inbox
has been receiving messages about these cartoons for weeks. The
messages range from high-pitched to very thoughtful, but not one of
them says, "Yeah, whatever ... "

There's no apathy surrounding this issue. This is because of the love
felt for the prophet and religious norms in Islam. But also because it
feeds into profound feelings of disempowerment, fear and insecurity
among Muslims that Europe would do well to understand. In Britain, we
should realise that Muslims here will be angry if the pictures are
gratuitously published in British papers - not just because of the
insults to Muhammad, but because it makes them feel disempowered.
Protesting is the only way to regain some self-respect.

First, the easy part. Any depiction of Muhammad, however temperate, is
not allowed. There are but a few images of him in Muslim history, and
even these are shown with his face veiled. This applies not only to
images of Muhammad: no prophet is to be depicted. There are no images
of God in Islam either.

So there is hurt and anger, and the messages I receive reflect that. In
response, they suggest different approaches. One is through lobbying:
distributing the phone numbers of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the
Danish ambassador, Denmark's parliament and everything else Danish, and
urging Muslims to make their feelings known. We also have the boycott
approach - "the only language the west understands" - listing every
Danish product that one can buy. I also get messages from the great
optimists, suggesting we use the controversy to explain the real nature
of Muhammad, who returned insults with kindness. Indeed, Muslims would
do well to remember that.

I have also been receiving other messages. These are the most worrying,
and the ones of which Europe must take note. These are the messages of
resignation. The messages that discuss exit strategies. The messages
that question the very future of Muslims in Europe.

Why such hand-wringing over a few cartoons? The key is in the images
themselves: Muhammad with turbaned bomb, Muhammad declaring that
paradise had run out of virgins for suicide bombers, Muhammad with
sword and veiled women. Muhammad in every Orientalist caricature.
Muhammad as a symbol for Islam and Muslims. These are the stereotypes
that, as Muslims, we face daily. The looks on the tube, the suspicion,
the eyes on the bags we carry. There is no denying the feeling of being
pushed against a wall, of drowning in the stereotypes that abound. This
is no way to live, and it is certainly no springboard for making a
major contribution to the society you live in.

The messages to my inbox of resignation, of fear, come with good
reason. Some countries that have reprinted the images - Spain, France,
Italy and Germany - have a nasty history of fascism. Just last week we
had Holocaust memorial day. The Holocaust did not occur overnight. It
took time to establish a people as subhuman, and cartoons played their
part. Does Europe not remember its past and the Nazi propaganda of Der
Stürmer?

Now the great shape-shifter of fascism seems to have taken on the
clothes of "freedom of speech". If these cartoons were designed to
provoke Muslim fundamentalists, maybe they have done more to reveal the
prejudices of Europe. Europe has a history of turning on its
minorities. Will that be its future too?

· Sarah Joseph is editor of emel magazine info@emelmagazine.com

Prophetic fallacy

The fact that a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb
on his turban is offensive to many Muslims should not be used as an
argument for restricting freedom of expression.

Agnès Callamard

Thursday February 2, 2006

In September 2005, a Danish newspaper published 10 cartoons, including
one depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his turban.

There were immediate protests within Denmark and the situation has
recently escalated to the point where Danish goods are being boycotted,
Scandinavian aid workers have been pulled out of Gaza and ambassadors
have been recalled.

One striking feature of these events is the remarkable absence of
sensible dialogue. Instead, there have been a series of accusations and
counter-accusations, variously defending the absolute right to free
speech and calling for apologies and censorship in the name of religion.

The right to freedom of opinion and expression is a fundamental right
that safeguards the exercise of all other rights and is a critical
underpinning of democracy.

As international human rights courts have stressed, it is applicable
not only to "information" or "ideas" that are favourably received but
also to those that offend, shock or disturb.

Article 19's analysis of this case is that, in the absence of a
specific intention to promote hatred, criminal or other censorship
measures against the newspaper would not be legitimate.

We recognise that the cartoons were offensive to many Muslims, but
offence and blasphemy should not be threshold standards for curtailing
freedom of expression.

Blasphemy laws protect beliefs as opposed to people. Restrictions on
freedom of expression which privilege certain ideas cannot be
justified. At the same time, international human rights law does
protect the right of everyone to hold beliefs, and to be free of
violence or discrimination.

These events, however, raise broader issues of free speech and human
rights that have so far not been addressed sufficiently. Societies
throughout the world have failed to address discrimination against
religious minorities.

Western societies risk a serious escalation of intolerance and
discrimination against Muslims while unequal treatment of religious
minorities in many other societies, including in the Middle East, is
well documented.

Governments and a range of other actors have a very important role to
play in addressing and preventing discrimination and violence, and
protecting the right to equality.

Legal restrictions on speech can at best form a small part of the
response to intolerance. The putting into place of a range of positive
measures to promote equality and combat intolerance and prejudice must
also be part of the strategy.

Responsible media, for example, have a social and moral obligation to
combat intolerance and to ensure open public debate about matters of
public concern.

In this case, serious and informed debate about the issues raised by
the cartoons, involving a multiplicity of voices, both religious and
secular, would have been helpful.

This responsibility rests with media in all countries affected by these
events. Governments also have a key role to play in ensuring that
sensible, solution-oriented perspectives are put forward.

Instead, the "dialogue" has far too frequently been characterised by
inflammatory headlines, political speeches and other measures to
escalate tensions and highlight divisions.

Indeed, the war of words and acts is reminiscent of global reactions to
the US-led war on Iraq or Iran's nuclear programme. Reading the
headlines, one could be forgiven for thinking that Samuel Huntington's
clash of civilisation is upon us.

Twelve Danish journalists came to London two weeks ago to discuss the
cartoons with Article 19 and other NGOs. Our discussions then reflected
our concerns of the dangers that a deterioration of the situation would
pose, as well as possible means of avoiding such dangers.

Unfortunately, the set of events that has unfolded since then has
validated our concerns rather than our hopes.

Our societies need to find more sensible ways to address situations
like this, which highlight global differences of opinion.

Free speech, the involvement of a diversity of voices, well-informed
public debates and a responsible media are central to this.

· Dr Agnès Callamard is executive director of Article 19,
a human rights organisation focusing on the defence and promotion of
freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide.

Respect, and a real debate

Roger Scruton, philosopher

Freedom of speech is one of the bastions of democratic government, and
it has been clear at least since John Stuart Mill's eloquent defence of
it that, without free speech, we are likely to be locked into mistaken
policies until the point comes when we can no longer correct them.
Actually this has happened in this country in the matter of
immigration. As we all know, the cost of expressing reservations about
the growth of Muslim ghettos in our cities was, at the time when this
might have been avoided, far too great to take the risk. Now we must
live with the consequences, and they are only just beginning.

That said, we ought also to recognize that freedom of speech does not
mean the freedom to produce images, however offensive, or to make
insulting gestures. The United States supreme court has set a very
destructive precedent here, by regarding pornography as "speech" for
the purposes of the constitution's first amendment, so protecting the
most offensive image-mongering as though it were a vital contribution
to public debate.

The effect of this has been amplified by the hooligan culture of
"Britart", which has routinely presented images that desecrate the
symbols of the Christian faith as though this were some daring
challenge to oppressive hierarchies and a bid for liberation. Gilbert
and George have just produced another truckload of this stuff, and the
critics are making their routine nods of approval. As a result of this
and the quotidian displays of degeneracy on TV we have lost all sense
that the icons of faith must be respected, however ridiculous they may
seem.

A faith is not a system of intellectual beliefs; it is a way of life.
And the symbols of that way of life are like family portraits, which
stay on the wall and the desk, defining the place where we are, the
place that is ours, the home that is sacred and not to be defiled.
Those who spit on them are not regarded kindly.

This does not mean that we cannot openly discuss the tenets of a faith
or the deeds of its followers. On the contrary we can and must. We need
Muslims to come clean about their faith, just as we Christians have –
for the most part – come clean about ours. We want to know whether they
accept the doctrine of jihad as this was elaborated by Ibn Taymiyya or
whether, on the contrary, they accept the validity of peaceful
coexistence and the legitimacy of secular law. Some do, some don't. But
all should discuss it publicly, so that we can decide what to do.

Looney Toons!

Sajjad Khan, New Civilisation

What started off as a little local difficulty about community
integration in Denmark following the publication of the famously
controversial cartoons has now escalated into a worldwide chasm between
the Muslim and western worlds. Many commentators have fixed the debate
between the absolute principle of free speech versus what they perceive
as an obscurantist attempt by Muslims to censor any criticism, satire
or rebuke of their beliefs or revered figures.

Many recent media editorials and columns imply that the western world
practices absolute freedom of speech and expression. But (to take only
Britain as an example) absolute freedom of speech doesn't exist – from
incitement to racial hatred to libel laws, from the official secrets
act to incitement to violence, from banning images of child abuse to
the proposed glorification of terrorism, many western societies have no
shortage of laws that censor speech.

There was little outcry from these advocates of free speech when the
British government took out an unprecedented injunction stopping
publication of the infamous al-Jazeera memo. There was no outcry from
the free-speech lobby when internet service providers are told to
crackdown on child pornographic sites (with the exception of Denmark
where some sites are legal). Similarly, when the Austrian chancellor
condemned the publication of sexually-graphic images of the Britain's
Queen Elizabeth II, George W Bush and Jacques Chirac in January 2006
there was no libertarian outcry. Die Welt, the German newspaper that on
free-speech grounds took a "principled stand" to publish the
controversial cartoons, would never be permitted by law or social
pressures to publish anti-semitic cartoons or question holocaust
statistics. France claims to be a protector of freedom while
simultaneously denying Muslim women the right to wear the headscarf in
schools.

These examples illustrate that every society weighs the right of speech
against other important values such as justice, security, dignity, or
building community cohesion. The same is true for any freedom. If
freedom trumped every other value, no one would be forced to pay taxes,
the media would not censor pictures of dead soldiers out of concern for
their families, and there would be no need for confidentiality
agreements in various walks of life. Failing to place a principled
limit on freedom would lead to a free-for-all. Civilised society would
collapse, indecency would rise, bad language would be ubiquitous,
respect would vanish and community cohesion would be eroded.

Every society has its important symbols of reverence. In the United
States it is the constitution, the founding fathers and the flag. In
France it is the republic. Britain reveres the institution of
parliament and the country's war heroes. For the Jewish people it is
the Torah and perhaps the holocaust. Muslims revere God, the Qu'ran and
the prophets. Each community feels a deep-rooted passion and strong
emotional attachment to these symbols. Intelligent people of all
civilisations usually understand this and are sensitive to these
feelings, even when they disagree with the substance these symbols
represent.

If courtesy can be restored, then we can move to the more productive
arena of debating the real issues of difference that exist between
Islam and secular societies. I know of no debating platform where the
rules of civility are not a precursor, and where frank abuse would be
tolerated. Isn't it a basic rule of setting ground-rules that all
parties agree them together rather that those with power simply
deciding for everyone and being satisfied with their implementation?

The reaction to these cartoons in the Muslim world makes it even harder
to argue that western secular values can be successfully implemented
there (an objective already reeling from the pernicious "war on
terror"). The burning of embassies is regrettable, but it is
disingenuous to suggest that the reaction is a surprise given the
backdrop of invasion, occupation, desecration of holy books and the
humiliation in Abu Ghraib and Guantànamo Bay. In Europe,
moreover, there is severe prejudice against Islam in many countries
(especially Denmark). It is as if the abuse meted out by gratuitously
republishing the images across Europe was done in the expectation that
they would only cause the "cartoon damage" that Bugs Bunny does to
Daffy Duck. In real life you can't abuse people and expect them to just
get up again and walk away.

Them and us

Patrice de Beer

L'affaire started in France on 1 February when the dying daily
France-Soir decided to reprint cartoons criticising Islam and its
prophet, Muhammad, as a sign of solidarity with the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten; the editor was subsequently fired by the owner, a
Franco-Egyptian businessman. Islamist demonstrators all over the middle
east started to throw France – which sees herself as a traditional
friend of the Arab world – in the same basket as Denmark and Norway.

Since then, another daily, Libération, has done the same – after
lengthy internal debates – and Le Monde published a massive front-page
cartoon from its main cartoonist, Plantu, who managed to draw a
portrait of the prophet composed solely of the repetition of the same
sentence: "Je ne dois pas dessiner Mahomet" ("I must not draw
Muhammad"). As much a cartoon as an editorial comment!

The main reason for this French response, as for many other media in
Europe – with the main exception of Britain – is the desire to inform
readers and to show solidarity with colleagues whose freedom to publish
is being threatened.

At a deeper level, French reactions to an event whose origins have yet
to be elucidated (the "offensive" cartoons were, after all, first
published … in September 2005) show how complex and difficult it can be
to deal with issues of this sort. Most politicians have simultaneously
criticised the lack of "sensitivity" of these cartoons while stressing
the importance of press freedom. As one of them admitted: "It's nitro"
(i.e. nitro-glycerine). But, in France, the reasons for this prudence
are different from other European countries: it is far less related to
the demonstrations and inflammatory speeches in the middle east than to
the domestic situation, just a few weeks after the suburban riots and
only fifteen months before the next presidential elections. Will the
debate on immigration invite itself again into the campaign, and at
what cost?

Until now, reactions from the multi-faceted Muslim community – the
largest in Europe – have been subdued, critical but not inflammatory –
threats to sue France-Soir, not to torch its precincts. A sign of
maturity from the community's leadership probably, but perhaps also
some fear of a political backlash. This crisis has already inflated the
opinion-poll support for Jean-Marie Le Pen's extreme-right and
xenophobic National Front; nobody has forgotten how, in 2002, he
managed to spoil the democratic debate in finishing second during the
first round of the presidential elections, just behind Jacques Chirac
and ahead of the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin.

Some pollsters have stressed the "fear of feeding extremism" which
could peel away from the right to people fearing that "they are
threatening our own freedom of expression" and stir up feelings against
the Muslim community, most of whom are French citizens. Today, 6
February, the Socialist Party stressed that "law should not be made in
the streets" and that "press freedom is part and parcel of democracy,
which is non-negotiable".

Others fear that this crisis could nurture a "clash of values".
Paradoxically, the only issue on which opinions on both sides of the
conflict seem to agree is that double standards should not be accepted.
If the "Arab street", and those who are trying to stir it up,
criticises Europeans for allowing "blasphemy" against Islam, one could
ask in response why we haven't seen Muslim crowds demonstrating against
terrorists throwing bombs in the name of Allah "the merciful", the
torching of churches in Iraq or the murder of Christians (the Jews are
long gone) in countries from Pakistan to Turkey.

Another French cartoonist, Cabu, has wondered why "moderate Muslims
don't express themselves, and allow terrible things be done in their
names?" The problem is that these double standards are, in fact, only
the tip of an iceberg of misunderstandings based on the political use
of religion: "they" expect us to behave like them and "we" expect them
to behave like us. Will it end one day?

Muslims as subjects

Fauzia Ahmad, Bristol University researcher

In this discussion, it would be a mistake to see "Europe" and "Muslims"
as discrete entities – debating within such a binary frame can only
serve to reproduce artificial boundaries of "Them" and "Us". If we are
to learn anything from the recent furore, it is that Muslims in Europe
want to be treated with equality and respect and be recognised as
valued contributors and citizens of the societies in which they live.
In this light, I believe we need to take a few steps back to reassess
the context of the protests.

What has changed in the past decade? Have debates on racism within the
United Kingdom and Europe actually yielded real, positive change? There
have indeed been some moves to recognise religious discrimination and
Islamophobia at structural levels but I believe these gains are
relatively minimal and have failed to filter down to address the very
real racism Muslims face on a daily basis.

Watching the events unfold, reading various commentaries and looking at
the cartoons themselves aroused several emotions for me. One was the
deep sense of unease I felt looking at the offending cartoons – they
are indeed insulting, stereotypical and frankly racist.

Crisis points in our recent histories such as 11 September 2001, the
Iraq war, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings and the cartoon
affair have all resulted in more calls for dialogue, understanding and
education. These are very noble aims which we should all hold onto, but
I think some more creative thinking is required that fully acknowledges
the pervasive and damaging nature of anti-Muslim racism.

In Britain, the absurdity of British National Party leader Nick
Griffin's recent acquittal from charges of incitement to racial hatred
has left many of us baffled. In what were clearly inflammatory
statements against Islam and Muslims, which he was allowed to repeat in
court without challenge, Islamophobia became publicly legitimised and
justified as an example of "free speech". The cartoons are no
different. When seen in terms of the disenfranchisement and
disempowerment of Muslims from political and social structures in
Europe, the cartoons take on a new significance that renders talk of
"free speech" a red herring and distraction. Here, Muslims are again
expected to act as apologists for the violent remonstrations of a few.
Rather than seeking constructive ways to challenge latent Islamophobic
racism, we have allowed this to fester and gain "respectability", as a
sort of distant cousin of "real" racism.

The question we need to ask is – what part do our elected
representatives, and the governing and legal structures they uphold,
play in the realisation of this racism? What part do they play in
combatting it? All we seem to have now are superficial calls for
"integration" where migrant cultures (read Muslim) are problematised
and pathologised, where migrants are expected to make unfair choices if
they are to "fit in", and where Muslims are expected to respond to
Eurocentric debates and questions that are heavily laden and highly
assumptive, and serve to objectify Muslim experiences, again.

I am reminded of another central and unresolved question that concerns
all of us living within the shifting boundaries of Europe – are we to
view Europe as a project or an identity? Who decides?

Religion: handle with care

Adam Szostkiewicz, Warsaw journalist

Poland is no stranger to things Muslim. We shared political, cultural
and military history with the Ottoman Turks; centuries ago we fought
wars with them, and made peace with them. King Jan III Sobieski stopped
the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683.

However, when Poland was partitioned among the Habsburgs, Prussia and
the Russians in the late 18th century the sultan refused to legally
accept the partitions. The Ottoman sublime porte was able to sense the
danger of Europe's losing the balance of power.

All this still echoes in my country. Poland has a small community of
Muslims of Tartar descent dating back to the Ottoman era. We officially
support Turkey's bid for full European Union membership. And there are
at least 20,000-25,000 foreign Muslims living here – students,
businessmen, diplomats, refugees from Chechnya and other unfortunate
lands. Last but not least, we joined the anti-Saddam coalition, and now
have more than 1,000 troops in Iraq.

So it came as a shock to many in this country when a leading Polish
daily, Rzeczpospolita, republished two cartoons from the Danish paper
Jyllands-Posten. The daily's editors said the recycling of this
inflammatory material was meant to be a gesture of solidarity with
those in Europe who champion the freedom of speech. They posed the
question: how can you have an informed debate on the cartoon issue
without first having a look at the caricatures themselves?

The politicians and religious leaders did not feel that way. The prime
minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, and the minister for foreign
affairs, Stefan Meller, apologised to those who may have felt offended.
The Council of Polish Muslims and Catholics condemned the
republication, as did a Polish Roman Catholic bishop committed to
interfaith dialogue. The Polish Muslim organisations threatened to take
the paper to court for a serious breach of law protecting religious
feelings.

As the tension grew, Grzegorz Gauden, the editor-in-chief of
Rzeczpospolita offered his apologies. He said it was not the paper's
intention to offend Muslims and their faith, but they had wanted to act
in defence of civil liberties and media freedom.

As the cartoon controversy still rages on here – Polish society being
rather divided on the issue, more or less along pan-European lines –
two lessons come to my mind as a writer on both religion and
international relations.

First, beware of handling religion without care – it's highly explosive
and may spread havoc in the global village which is today's world.
Always seek advice from the religion-literate when contemplating an
editorial or journalistic decision on a religious story. This is not
self-censorship, but an act of prudence as well as professionalism.

Second, the end result of the Danish incident is deeply annoying. In no
way has it promoted a better understanding between Europe and Islam,
nor has it made our democratic and pluralist societies safer and more
secure.

To make things worse, it was a favour done to extremists on two fronts:
it may be used as a rallying cry by both radical Islamist parties, and
conservatives within the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox forces now
uniting against a "secular-postmodernist'' juggernaut rolling across
the western world. Sorry, but it was not worth it.

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Honing European traditions

Shaida Nabi, researcher, University of Manchester

Free speech has had a mighty battering recently. This is not because of
any Muslim resistance to the gratuitous depictions of the holy prophet
[peace be upon him]; rather, it is because a chorus of European
commentators have invoked the freedom to speak as a smokescreen for the
crudest form of racist vilification. In addition to Israel, this racist
vilification spans at least thirteen European states.

The constellation of responses spanning media coverage cannot have
escaped anyone's attention. Reminiscent of the liberal inquisition
pursued by western commentators during the Salman Rushdie affair in
1989, we are yet again witnessing attempts to denigrate legitimate
Muslim political expression. Back then Muslims merely questioned the
conventional criteria of free speech. Now, however, they recognise free
speech as the red herring in an Islamophobic onslaught. In both cases,
Muslim protest has been widely construed as inherently transgressive.

Once again, the largely peaceful print protest, petitions, economic
boycotts, and mass diplomatic engagement are being clipped from our
view in favour of more sensational imagery: burning flags and
embassies. In a play of déjà vu, these images are
obscuring the burning issue at stake: anti-Muslim racism.

This aspect of the cartoons has been muffled, and instead, the
sub-level debate, barring a few recent commentaries, has focused on the
"freedoms of the west versus the despotic east", the "European
tradition of satire versus the ignorance of the Muslim world", and the
"violence of a minority versus the upsurge of global Muslim (and
increasingly "non-Muslim") resistance".

These cartoons cannot be located in the tradition of European satire,
but they can be located within the tradition of racist representation,
currently directed at Europe's powerless minorities. If the cartoons
represent anything, they are indicative of this relation of power,
which if left unchecked, will exceed these malign gestures to re-enact
Europe's own bloody history of ethnic cleansing. Indeed, we need to
question the value of free speech precisely because of such racist
appropriation. There is certainly nothing funny about racism, not least
when you are its primary recipient.

Yet one might have anticipated a more sophisticated whitewash than the
one being drip-fed to Europe's Muslims. The managing editor of France
Soir epitomised the clumsiness, with the headline "Yes we have the
right to caricature God". It must have escaped him it was not God in
these cartoons. With European ambassadors across the middle east being
recalled; with mass protest from Christian sects in Bethlehem to
Muslims in secular Turkey; and with Denmark alone at least £40
million short, perhaps the racist power-play now seems a little less
satirical.

So where now?

Like the Jews in the 1930s who were also the subject of many a cartoon,
are we, as Ziauddin Sardar asks, being set up for a holocaust? Is this
the road Europe is paving for its Muslims in the name of (as Die Welt,
one of the offending German papers, put it) "Europe-wide solidarity"?

Those advertising Islamophobic caricatures in the name of free speech
understand that Islamophobic insult is not prosecutable. And herein
lies one of the small ways forward, a way that was diluted to
irrelevance this week by the British parliament, and stupendously
undermined when the BNP leader walked free following his court trial.

Britain and the United States have responded with apparent restraint.
All things considered, in the context of a "war on terror" this
"responsibility" is somewhat curious. The British state and its papers
are enjoying this exceptionally responsible status away from
continental Europe. The way forward would be to make this exceptional
stance the norm, not merely in the publishing houses of Europe, but in
the offices of state. And indeed, for this to be a recognised aspect of
European tradition.

Rasmussen’s folly

KA Dilday, writer

If a tree falls in Denmark does anyone hear it?

In December 2005 I read an interview with the writer Philip Roth that
had been translated into English from its original publication in a
Danish newspaper. It mentioned in passing a "huge scandal" in Denmark:
a venerable 68-year-old Danish writer had been pilloried for having sex
with the 18-year-old daughter of his maid in Haiti and writing about
it. Sexual-racial dynamics of that sort interest and disturb me so I
searched for articles on the scandal – yet I could find none in either
English or French.

Had it been, say, Philip Roth who had done such, I dare say I could
have found reports in most languages. But Denmark, tucked up there at
the tip of Europe, a tiny, relatively homogenous country of scarcely
5.5 million people, with relatively little global weight and
involvement in few conflicts doesn’t generate much press. Consider that
the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed that have set off a global
furore were first published in Denmark in September 2005 and that most
of us non-Scandinavian "westerners" only just started reading about it
in our local papers.

The editor-in-chief of Jyllands-Posten, the paper that commissioned and
published the cartoons has expressed shock at the furore that followed
publication. Any editor in France or the United States or Britain or
the Netherlands would have understood what publishing these cartoons
would unleash. They might have done it anyway (and of course a group of
European editors did just that as a show of solidarity) but they would
have been well aware of the potential for extreme ramifications.

Carsten Juste is not the only Dane who is blissfully ignorant: Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark refused to meet with
ambassadors representing predominantly Muslim countries over the issue,
saying: "the background to my rejection is that they sent me a letter
which concluded that I, as prime minister, should take legal measures
against the press. I cannot. I will not. And if I agreed to hold a
meeting on the same topic that would be the same as accepting that this
is a relevant problem which there could be dialogue about."

If a group of ambassadors to your country thinks something is a
problem, then that in itself is a problem that must be addressed by the
foreign minister. It doesn't matter whether you think they should be
angry or not. Had a group of ambassadors representing European Union
countries requested a meeting, I have no doubt that no matter what he
thought of their concern, Rasmussen would have met with them. Indeed,
twenty-two former Danish ambassadors criticised Rasmussen early on for
his handling of the issue. A good diplomat would have received the
group, expressed regret and likely said that unfortunately with the
laws of the country, his hands were tied and that freedom of speech
protected the Muslim community as well as the press.

It is probably easy to ignore Denmark’s tiny Muslim population. 93% of
the population is of the same indigenous Dane ethnic group. The 2% of
people in Denmark who say that they are Muslim are probably drawn from
those of Turkish, Asian, African and Balkan origin – collectively about
4% of the population. I expect that for a Dane, it is probably pretty
easy to live one's life without ever having to consider the perspective
of someone who looks or worships (or abstains from worship) differently
from you.

In response to the unfolding events, Carsten Juste said: "I'm very
surprised that the reactions have been so sharp, very shocked, and I
find the death threats against the cartoonists to be horrible and out
of proportion".

His surprise surprises me. In this new information age, if a tree falls
in Denmark, it is to be hoped that the world will hear it. At its best,
this recent globalised amplification is what protects those in remote
places from unseen repression. At its worst it facilitates what we see
now: the ability to network violence. Of course the reaction is
horrible and wrong but if Carsten Juste is going to be bold and make a
statement, it's would have been wise to have an idea of the likely
consequences. That would be an informed choice. It's Anders Fogh
Rasmussen who is shockingly bad at his job since he refused to do it by
dealing with a potentially explosive issue until it exploded. It’s not
free speech that created the outrage, but access. One wonders if all of
this would have happened if he had simply opened his door to the
ambassadors.

Blurred boundaries

Saeed Taji Farouky, filmmaker

The charge of blasphemy was first made in September 2005, but it took
until last week for the controversy over Jyllands-Posten’s cartoons of
the Prophet Mohammed to turn into an international diplomatic crisis.
What the situation highlights most starkly is that, despite increasing
fascination with Europe’s relationship to the Muslim world, there is
still little appreciation of cultural relativism, and in this case, a
distinct failure to understand that the line between politics and
journalism is drawn differently in the two regions.

This is all happening at a time when Denmark’s immigration policy is
considered the toughest in Europe and support for the extreme
rightwing, anti-immigration Danish People’s Party increased to 13.3% in
the February 2006 general election. Add to this the fact that Muslim
governments, disaffected Muslim communities and European media are so
highly sensitive to ideological encounters that they threaten to
overreact at every possible opportunity, and it should be obvious by
now that publishing the cartoons was, at best, poorly thought out.
Freedom of expression is most valuable, after all, when it is exercised
strategically and logically, not merely pushed to its limits for
naïve sensationalism.

However, as Jyllands-Posten pointed out, they have broken no law, and
Muslim diplomats and protesters have now undermined the entire concept
of legitimate protest by the scale of their reactions and by their
failure to distinguish between political and cultural responsibilities.
If something truly appalling were to happen, something far more serious
than these Danish cartoons, those same protesters and diplomats would
be left with no way to express genuine outrage. Like the "boy who cried
wolf", the violent protesters will find that if they are ever faced
with a real crisis, European governments, and even public opinion, will
be hard pressed to take them seriously. That threatens not only their
own voices, but also the voices of Muslims around the world who do not
feel that the violent protesters represent their views.

This is not to say that Muslims, who have every right to be insulted by
the cartoons, should simply keep quiet. Instead, their arguments should
be confined to the right arena. The cartoons are not a political issue;
they never were, and to suggest that politicians get involved in
restraining journalists contradicts one of the fundamentals of a
liberal democracy. Whether or not you agree with Danish prime minister
Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s handling of the whole controversy, it is
difficult to argue with his statement that "the government refuses to
apologise because the government does not control the media or a
newspaper outlet; that would be in violation of the freedom of speech".

In many of the countries that reacted most strongly to the cartoons,
there is no independent free press nor is there is guarantee of freedom
of speech. Syria, for example, continues to exercise extremely strict
control over the content of its news media, and as far as the ordinary
Syrian is concerned, the opinion of Denmark’s biggest selling daily is
the opinion of the Danish government. Syria’s protesters have little
experience with debates over a free press, such is the intimacy between
the content of their newspapers and the opinions of their politicians,
and this hazy border makes it difficult for the outraged governments to
accept the familiar defence of independent press freedom.

At the same time, the European media’s blurring of the line between
political and ideological clashes is making it extremely difficult for
them to understand that Muslim protests are inspired not by a hatred of
press freedom or a rejection of northern European liberal values, but
by resentment at the impunity and insensitivity of Europe’s press. For
Jyllands-Posten, publishing the cartoons was simply an exercise in
provocation, while journalists living under dictatorships are literally
dying for such freedoms – and that risks undermining the significance
of press freedoms in general.

What can be done to avoid a similar situation in the future?
Jyllands-Posten and her newspapers in solidarity are trying to frame
this as a fundamental difference between Muslim and non-Muslim
cultures, but the cartoons themselves express how blatantly and
deliberately provocative they are. "The editorial team of
Jyllands-Posten is a bunch of reactionary provocateurs", reads one
caption. Another says: "Relax guys, it's just a drawing made by some
infidel south Jutlander."

The controversy has shamelessly stoked the flames of Samuel
Huntington’s "clash of civilisations " fallacy in little more than a
publicity stunt when, by this point, it has more to do with posturing
than any ideological confrontation. The fact is, both the European
editors and the protesters are demanding the same thing: a basic
respect of boundaries. Respecting boundaries does not mean that free
speech is under threat, nor does it mean that journalists are being
allowing to get away with blasphemy, it simply means appreciating the
responsibilities that come along with certain freedoms.